Hyejung Won
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Genetics
Most DNA differences linked to common diseases do not change a protein. Instead, they sit in regulatory elements, stretches of DNA that act like switches controlling when and how strongly nearby genes turn on.
- Fields
Genetics
Neuroscience
Biology
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
gene regulation
cis-regulatory elements
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Develop single-cell massively parallel reporter assays (scMPRA), which combine DNA barcoding with single-cell RNA sequencing, to measure thousands of Alzheimer's-linked regulatory elements in different brain cell types at once.
- Apply scMPRA in the brains of two Alzheimer's disease mouse models and age-matched littermates to identify which cell types and regulatory elements matter for aging and disease.
- Measure the gene-regulatory effects of about 500,000 GWAS-linked human variant alleles in mouse brain, liver, lung, muscle and heart, using MPRA libraries delivered by adeno-associated virus (AAV) through the bloodstream.
- Test whether variant effects differ by sex and under inflammation, and validate selected variants by editing them into human pluripotent stem cells, contributing to the IGVF Consortium's variant catalog.
More about the research
Which of thousands of candidate variants actually change gene activity, and in which tissues or cell types, is largely unknown. This research tests large numbers of these DNA switches directly in living mice. One project focuses on Alzheimer's disease in single brain cells, and the other surveys disease-linked variants across five organs.
Why it matters
Alzheimer's disease lacks effective treatments, partly because the gene-regulation changes behind it in specific brain cells are poorly understood. Tools and maps from this work may help develop new biomarkers for diagnosis or prognosis and new therapies for Alzheimer's. A catalog of DNA variants that change gene activity in the brain, liver, lung, muscle and heart may reveal new drug targets for common diseases.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Anat Kreimer
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Genetics
Develop methods that integrate massively parallel reporter assay (MPRA) data, which test thousands of DNA sequences at once, with other genomic assays and deep learning to reconstruct cell-type-specific gene regulatory networks and their condition-specific regulators.
Minoli Perera
Northwestern University, IL·Genetics
Identify regulatory variants that affect drug-metabolizing enzymes by analyzing genomic and transcriptomic data from 120 primary hepatocyte cultures, with a focus on African ancestry samples.
Melissa Gymrek
University of California-San Diego, CA·Genetics
Develop scalable methods for tandem repeat (TR)-based GWAS that genotype repeats directly from UK Biobank and All of Us whole genome sequences, producing a catalog of TRs linked to complex traits.
The school
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 523 research doctorates a year.
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