We are entering an incredibly exciting scientific era with rapidly advance of sequencing technologies, and exponential accumulation of omics data such as genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic data. Especially, advances of sequencing technologies have scaled-down the amount of DNA necessary for library preparation to the level that DNA/RNA in a single cell suffices for sequencing. Single cell sequencing has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of many fundamental questions in multiple disciplines such as developmental biology, stem cell biology, cell fate decision, immunity and metagenomics. The development of single cell sequencing also has a lot clinical implication. For example, the widespread cellular heterogeneity in clinical samples could result in selective drug resistance and failure of treatment in during cancer treatment. Single cell sequencing is ideally powerful for identifying variations in heterogeneous samples and is critical for the success of precision medicine. However, it is still a big challenge for scientists to gain the biological insights from the huge amount of single cell multi-omics data.

Dr. Jin’s lab is interested in identifying genetic/epigenetic changes underlying cancer, and developing disease risk prediction model for precision medicine. The long-term goal of the lab is to develop efficient personalized treatment for cancers based on patients’ genetic background. In near future, the lab will focus on investigating genetic/epigenetic heterogeneity and micro-evolution of cancer cells using single cell sequencing related technologies.