A fertilized egg - a single cell - carrying one copy of mom's and one copy of dad's DNA is able to divide and differentiate to trillions of cells and hundreds of cell types in our body, enabling each of us to thrive in the society.

       Our lab has focused on developing precision imaging tools to investigate molecular dynamics and cellular structures across various scales related to gene and genome regulation. Our techniques allow for the imaging of molecular dynamics of components like proteins and genomic loci in live cells. We also developed super-resolution methods, such as 3D ATAC-PALM, to map genome organization in single cells, helping us study how protein complexes like cohesin regulate chromatin clustering and gene co-expression at the single-cell level.

      Inspired by these findings, we recently developed cycleHCR, a method for highly-multiplexed imaging of RNA and proteins in tissues. This tool simultaneously captures spatial gene expression and high-resolution subcellular architecture in thick tissue blocks. Moving forward, our goal is to combine these tools with genetic perturbations and AI-powered data science to identify networks that regulate high-dimensional gene co-expression during development and in adult tissues.