I'm currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Genetics, Rutgers. My research interests include mobile element biology; population genetics; comparative and evolutionary genomics; and human disease gene identification using genomic data.

News:

Jan 24 2012

Happy Chinese New Year! Our paper studying the pigeon population diversity is published in Current Biology. It has been picked up by several press. Here are some press releases:

University of Utah (video interview with Dr. Mike Shapiro): Birds of a Feather Don’t Always Stick Together.
Science Now: High-performance pigeons have a dirty little secret.
Scientific American: Birds of a Feather: Genetic Classification Reveals Pigeons' Exceptional Diversity [Slide Show]
Science Daily: Birds of a Feather Don't Always Stick Together.

Jan 01 2012

Happy New Year! Yuhua and I have moved to New Jersey without too much trouble. I am in the process of setting up my lab at Rutgers. I will also be hiring, please see here for detail.

Aug 20 2011

Three papers are published recently. The 1000 Genome Project mobile element paper is published in PLOS Genetics. It took a while but I'm happy to see it's published.

The other paper is about what can we learn about ADHD from exome sequencing, and the ethical and clinical implications of unrelated findings. The study is published in Discovery Medicine, and please see below for a couple of news releases.

Last but not least we put out a fascinating evolutionary story about the genetic susceptibility of Crohn's disease. We put out a hypothesis that positive selection on the IBD5 locus in the early farmers might have contributed to the high incidence of the Crohn's disease in Caucasian populations. The work is published in Molecular Biology and Evolution. Also see below for some comment pieces on the web.

News report:

Exome sequencing and unrelated findings in the context of complex disease research: ethical and clinical implications.

Science Daily: As New Data Wave Begins, a Gene Study in One Disease Reveals Mutations in an Unrelated Disease

Genome Web: Exome Sequencing Highlights Ethical Issues of Searching for Disease-Causing Mutations in Patients

Crohn's disease and genetic hitchhiking at IBD5.

Daily RX: "Hitchhikers" bring bowel disease

Gene Expression: Crohn’s disease is about barely keeping you alive

Salt Lake Tribune: U. researchers identify 'hitchhiker' as genetic culprit in Crohn's

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