Welcome to Zhang Lab!
We are a bioinformatics lab in the
Department of Developmental Biology and
Center of Regenerative Medicine at
Washington University in St. Louis, School of Medicine.
Our research is to understand the evolution and adaption of human regulatory networks, with a focus on the impact of these processes on human health and disease. In particular, we investigate the biological activity of mobile elements (or transposable elements) and their roles in basic biology and cancer, including their genetic and epigenetic regulation in mammalian genome.
We use bioinformatic and computational methods in our research. We develop statistical and computational algorithms to explore the mammalian genome by integrating cross-species comparative and high-throughput genomics data. We test our hypothesis and validate our predictions with our collaborators.
Our interests span areas of genomics, epigenomics, evolution, systems biology, and many more. We also have a general interest in large data integration, including developing tools for analyzing high-throughput next-gen sequencing data, integrating genetic information into epigenetic landscape.