Yejing Ge
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Genetics
Cells can mark their DNA with small chemical tags called methyl groups. This DNA methylation helps decide which genes stay on and which stay off, and the pattern is passed on when cells divide.
- Fields
Genetics
Biology
Biochemistry
- Topics
DNA methylation
epigenetics
retrotransposons
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2029
What they work on
- Define how DNA methylation and histone methylation silence retrotransposons in adult mouse skin, using genetic mice that lack a key epigenetic repressor of these repeats.
- Determine how DNA methylation and retrotransposon activity steer the fate decisions of epidermal and hair follicle stem cells during normal tissue renewal and wound repair.
- Test whether methylation at retrotransposons changes the expression of neighboring genes or uses up limited methylation machinery, shifting lineage gene levels at a distance.
More about the research
In adult tissues the pattern is mostly stable. In aging and cancer, however, it goes awry. Large stretches lose their methylation, especially gene-poor regions and repeated DNA, while certain gene control regions gain too much. Why this happens and what it does to adult tissues is poorly understood. This project asks how DNA methylation shapes the fate of adult stem cells, both in normal conditions and under stress.
Why it matters
Widespread DNA methylation errors appear in aging and cancerous tissues, but their causes and effects are unclear. Learning how methylation controls retrotransposons and stem cell decisions in skin could clarify how these errors affect tissue renewal, wound repair and age-related decline. This understanding could eventually inform studies of aging and cancer.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Pooja Flora
University of California-Riverside, CA·Biology·Early-career
Characterize how gene expression and chromatin accessibility change with age across the distinct stem cell pools of adult skin, including basal interfollicular epithelial stem cells and hair follicle bulge stem cells, using multi-omics profiling.
Yuxuan Miao
University of Chicago, IL·Microbiology & Immunology
Use in vivo CRISPR screens and stem cell interactome sensors in mouse skin to find how epithelial stem cells remodel nearby immune cells into a temporary protective niche after wounding.
William Lowry
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Biology
Test whether raised glutaminolysis, the breakdown of glutamine for fuel, keeps hair follicle stem cells dormant when they lack lactate dehydrogenase (Ldh), using gain- and loss-of-function targeting of metabolic steps.
The school
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: 23 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research.
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