Education 

Ph.D. in the Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonia, USA.

Bachelor of Science, National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan.

Positions Held 

Assistant Professor, Insititute of Molecular Biology, National Chung Hsing University, TAIWAN.

Research Associate Postdoctoral Fellow at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center at USF.

Research Interests 

Gene expression plays a pivotal role in cell processes including development, the cell cycle, and differentiation. Tight control of gene expression is required for the growth of normal cells. It has been established that loss or aberrant control of gene expression in cells may contribute to diseases and tumors. Therefore, understanding how to control gene expression is urgent and detailed studies of mechanisms are required to uncover how genes can be regulated. Our findings provide a direct molecular linkage between the status of histone acetylation and transcriptional regulation. Acetylation of core histones now is believed to destabilize nucleosomes and as a result to facilitate the binding of transcription factors; whereas deacetylation of core histones is likely to stabilize nucleosomes and the higher order structure of chromatin and as a result to block the access of transcription factors, namely to inhibit transcription (Figure 1). Histone deacetylase protein complexes are deeply involved with cancer development. Specifically, HDAC1/2 can form stable protein complexes with different proteins, strongly implying that HDAC1/2 proteins function as core factors in different protein complexes. The functions of these different complexes depend on whom HDAC1/2 associate with in cells. Further studies of different HDAC1/2 protein complex will uncover their functions and roles in cancer development.

Deafness is a relatively common disorder. Approximately 1 in 800 children was born with a serious and permanent hearing impairment, and very large proportions of the population suffer from progressive hearing loss as they age. Genetic reasons as well as environments causes contribute to deafness in human. However, finding genes implicated in human deafness diseases has never been easy. In the last decade, the approach using techniques in human moleculare genetics has found that about 70 loci in the human genome are related to hearing loss This finding provides further evidence suggesting that the human deafness diseases are complicated disorders and that unknown genes involved are waiting for identification.

In the last year, progress in the Human Genome Project and development of murine models of deafness have resulted in rapid discovery of many loci and corresponding genes for deafness. As we knew all along, however, moving from identification of a gene to understanding its function is usually an important and required process. Therefore, we ask: how has the identification of these deafness genes helped our understanding of the moleculare basis of auditory function? One approach to answering this question is to study the functional interactions between protein molecules involved in human deafness using methods in

Honor 

Course