Dr. Yun Li (Professor, Genetics, Biostatistics and Computer Science) has received a new R01 grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) for her proposal titled “Study of selective cell and system vulnerability in Alzheimer’s disease”.
The study proposes to advance the mechanistic understanding of AD by acquiring and harmonizing various in-house, protected and public data, encompassing bulk and single-cell RNA-seq data, GWAS summary statistics, array genotyping and WGS data, as well as functional genomic data. Data sets will be analyzed with a suite of computational methods and bioinformatics tools to generate cell-type-specific mechanistic hypotheses, which will be validated through experimental technologies in iPSC-derived neural cells and brain organoids. CRISPRi and knock-in experiments will be used to perturb the most promising putatively causal regulatory DNA elements.