Profile

Zebrafish Research Focus

I am interested in leveraging the cutting-edge genomic technologies to solve the challenging problems in genetics/genomics on a large-scale. I spearheaded a large-scale mutagenesis project to generate thousands of mutants using random insertional mutagenesis. I generated more than 5000 mutants (~20,000 alleles), and transferred to the zebrafish stock center for the distribution to the community, the allele information was disseminated through a dedicated database and integrated into the ZFIN database. When targeted mutagenesis methods using CRISPR/Cas9 became available, it really radically changed my approach because now it was possible to perform targeted mutagenesis, and knockouts could be created at will. I developed a high-throughput workflow for targeted mutagenesis and targeted more than 500 genes thus far. This workflow is being used by several labs around the world, and has changed the way knockouts can be generated in zebrafish. Additionally, combining two mutagenesis approaches, we performed a large-scale genetic screen to identify genes involved in sensory hair cell regeneration and other tissues. We identified many novel regeneration specific genes and functionally validated in zebrafish. Currently, I am using zebrafish and high-throughput mutagenesis to model human diseases on a large scale.

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