Postdoctoral Fellow / Researcher
Postdoctoral Fellow Full-time
The Hongjie Li lab at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) will focus on developing and applying multi-omics technologies (transcriptomics, epigenomics, and proteomics) and combine them with Drosophila and mouse models to study brain aging and age-related intestinal cancers. The ultimate goal is to prevent or delay aging and improve our healthy lifespan. Two postdoc positions are currently available for following areas: 1) bioinformatics, single-cell sequencing; 2) fly genetics, or molecular and cellular biology, or mouse cancer models. Research Interests: Technology development of multi-omics: We have developed the first single-cell RNA sequencing platform in Drosophila neurons and glia for studying neural development (Li et al., 2017 Cell; Li et al 2020 Current Biology). Recently, we developed a single-nucleus RNA-seq method in adult flies and applied it to the Fly Cell Atlas (FCA), a large collaborative project aiming to get the transcriptomic map of the entire fly. We will continue developing and applying multi-omics technologies and combine them with powerful fly genetics to study development, aging and diseases. Anti-brain aging to increase healthy lifespan: Our long-term goal is to identify molecular and cellular mechanisms that contribute to brain aging, including glia-neuron interactions, systemic inflammatory signals, and gut-brain interactions. We will apply single-cell sequencing, single-bacterium genomics, cell surface proteomics to study glia-neuron interactions and inter-organ communications to understand brain aging. Limiting age-triggered tumor initiation and growth: Age is the biggest risk factor for many types of cancers, including breast, prostate, lung and colorectal cancers (H. Li and Jasper, 2016). A central goal of this project is to discover how aging triggers tumor onset in the regenerating intestine. We will use fly gut as a discovery model to generate hypotheses that we will then test in mouse cancer models and human colon cancers, aiming to develop effective strategies for limiting age-related tumor initiation and growth.