Zhao, Shaying
Research Interest
My lab is using experimental and computational approaches to study genomic changes occurring during mammalian evolution and disease development. The goal is to understand the roles of genomic changes playing in these normal and abnormal processes, as well as the mechanism through which these changes have taken place. The lab has two ongoing projects currently. The first one is to identify bona fide colorectal cancer genes via a novel comparative genomics and oncology strategy – by searching for genes that are commonly altered in human, dog and mouse colorectal tumors. The second project focuses on “the junk DNA” of the human genome, which has allowed us to discover two giant composite retrotransposon-like elements DA and Xiao. We are now conducting experiments to understand the nature of DA/Xiao and to explore their potential application in medicine and research.