Our Division specializes in the study of the genome as a whole. This focus comes with the need to analyse data from genome-wide studies, leading to the computational and analytical focus of the faculty in this division. The Zhang group has a research program of studying human diseases using computational human genetics and functional genomics of model organisms with computational analysis and integration of high-throughput data sets, while the Zheng group studies the functional properties of the genome, mainly using computational and systems genomics approaches. The Greally lab is interested in clinical genetics problems and how they can be addressed using genomics approaches, studying genomic variation and cellular epigenetic models of disease. The nature of the work in the Division of Genomics is highly collaborative with researchers in the Department of Genetics, throughout the medical school, and beyond the institution’s walls to colleagues in New York City. The Division is based in the Michael F. Price Center for Genetic and Translational Medicine.
Faculty/People
The Division currently consists of three full-time faculty:
John M. Greally. The Greally lab is focused on understanding the ~75% of patients with genetic disease for whom whole genome sequencing reveals no causal sequence variants. To enhance diagnostic yields, as part of the CSER NYCKidSeq project, this group is developing the GenomeDiver tool to enhance communication between caregivers and diagnostic sequencing labs. The group also studies mosaic chromosomal aneuploidies, and the way that environmental influences mediate disease risk through transcriptional regulatory mechanisms, a field typically described as epigenetics. Ongoing studies include a study of cellular epigenetic models of aging, transcriptomic studies of myalgic encephalitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, identification of DNA sequence variants influencing cell subtype proportions in a tissue, and lineage commitment perturbations by endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Visit the Greally lab for more information.
Deyou Zheng. Dr. Zheng's group develops and applies bioinformatics methods for mining and interpreting high-throughput genomic and epigenomic data. The research of his group is mainly focused on two areas: (i) genetic regulatory networks underlying neural and heart development and related congenital disorders; (ii) abnormal functions of chromatin modifiers in cancer development and treatment resistance; (iii) software development for quality control, interpretation, and visualization of big data from RNA-seq, single cell RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq etc. Visit the Zheng lab for more information.
Zhengdong Zhang. The research interests of Dr Zhang's lab are computational genetics and systems biology, including algorithm development, data integration, and software implementation, with a focus on human genotype-phenotype mapping and human disease genetics. The biological systems currently under investigation are aging in human and model organisms and human age-related diseases (i.e., Alzheimer's disease and cancer). Visit the Zhang lab for more information.