We are primarily focused on the areas of 4D genomics and single-cell omics as well as microbes and metagenomics, with an emphasis on advancing the application of multi-omics technologies to the regulation of animal and microbial function.

In the field of 4D genomics and single-cell omics, the current 3D genomics technology requires a large number of cells, which makes it impossible to perform micro-operations at the level of thousands of cells, and it cannot be applied to single-cell level research. We have optimized the "conventional endonuclease for fragmenting genome" to "high-efficiency endonuclease combination for fragmenting genome" by screening high-efficiency endonuclease and its combination, and are developing the ULI (Ultra-low input) eHiChIP technology. ULI eHiChIP technology is developed and tested in C2C12 cells and HEK 293T cells. HiC-Pro analyses showed that the effective proximity-ligation ratio for 100-2400 cells input was comparable to that for 0.1 million cells input, both are about ~80-95%. This is followed by technology development at the single-cell level to introduce uniquely identified barcodes (Barcode bridge-linker) in the proximity-ligation step and an RNAPII antibody pull-down step after ligation.

In the field of microbes and metagenomics, we developed a GutHi-C technology for animal gut microorganisms to address the problems of the difficulty of lysing strong microbial cell walls and incomplete microbial Hi-C cleavage, as well as low homogeneity and reproducibility of data. Through this technology, the cleavage effect of microbial genome enzymatic digestion is improved, and the key steps of improvement are optimized to enhance the efficiency and quality of library construction as well as the quality of sequencing data for assembling high-quality animal intestinal microbial metagenomes or using to study metagenomics assembly and functions. Based on the common characteristics of the microbial population, this technology provides an efficient method for microbial genome library construction and high-throughput sequencing, which can be applied to broad application prospects.

The research group has 12 members, including 1 PrePI, 1PI, 1 postdoc, 2 PhD Students, 5 MSc Students, and 2 Support and Management Staff.