Our Research

Welcome to our lab – we like to explore interesting biological questions using systems biology approaches! Currently, we are particularly interested in how fungal pathogens survive antifungal drugs at the axis of host-pathogen interactions.

Large-scale genome instability (e.g., loss of heterozygosity and aneuploidy) is frequently observed in eukaryotes and often leads to detrimental effects in cellular and organismal fitness. However, it is also the driving force of adaptive evolution, including the development of drug resistance. How cells leverage genomic abnormalities to survive antiproliferative conditions (and further thrive) remains unclear. This motivates us to study the physiological impacts of large-scale genome instability (e.g. aneuploidy), especially on cytoplasmic environment, proteome, metabolism and organelle interactions during the evolution of antifungal resistance.

Currently, three research directions are actively investigated in our group:

• How does the aneuploid state enable stress tolerance?

• How do host environment shape the evolution of antifungal resistance?

• Development of a novel diagnostic platform for fungal pathogens.

We employ molecular tools, high-throughput screens, experimental evolution and cell biological techniques to investigate the cellular processes in aneuploid cells, including experimental model organism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, human fungal pathogen Candida species and mammalian cells during the evolution of drug resistance.