MSc. Shengnan Sun

Research:
The human genome contains approximately 3 billion base pairs. The rest of the genome is referred to as the non-coding genome. There is a piece of knowledge missing in our current understanding of the non-coding regulatory regions—the silencers. Currently, I am focusing on identifying many silencers in an unbiased fashion and in a systematic way. We could infer the epigenetic modifications around silencers to further facilitate the computational identification of all potential silencers or identify silencers using experimental assays like ChIP-seq. Thus, systematic identification of silencers will help link genetic changes within silencers to phenotypes better to understand the complex genetic states of many human diseases. Additionally, I am also interested in identifying regulatory regions in cancer genomes and defining these regions' functions, which may control resistance to cocktail drug treatments that are often used in the anti-cancer intervention. I will carry out the drug response test, NGS data analysis in our group (ATAC-seq, ChIP-seq, CRISPR screen, etc.).
 

Curriculum Vitae:
I received my master’s degree in Animal Science from Jilin University, mainly focus on using CRISPR/Cas9 to generate gene-modified rabbits and pigs for study the effects of genes on atherosclerosis. In addition, investigate the effects of resveratrol on experimental mice and human monocytic cells. Then I joined the group of Baoxu Pang for my Ph.D. study in 2020. I am working on projects about identifying non-coding regulatory elements (ultra-conserved regions, enhancers, silencers) involved in drug response.