Research

I have received training in both human genetics and genomics. My Ph.D. research involves deciphering tumor heterogeneity with genomics tools in the Beijing Institute of Genomics. Later, I joined the Department of Human Genetics at UM to get more training on human genetics. Now I am applying the computational genomics tools to conduct the gene discovery research on arterial dysplasia and test subsequent functional hypotheses.


1) Cardiovascular disease: I switched to a translational research lab on cardiovascular disease in 2018. We have identified the key genes for fibromuscular dysplasia through genomic tools. I recently co-led a study reporting rare variant contributions on the COL5A1 gene, and this is the first clinically actionable finding for this disease. Our research was presented in VRIC 2020 and one manuscript has been published in ATVB.

    • Wang Y,..., Ganesh SK et al. "Adult and Pediatric Fibromuscular Dysplasia are Genetically Distinct Dysplasia-associated Arterial Diseases." Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology 40 (2020) A385-A385. (Conference Talk)

    • Richer, J*, Hill H*, Wang Y*,..., Ganesh, SK . "A Novel Recurrent COL5A1 Genetic Variant Is Associated With a Dysplasia-Associated Arterial Disease Exhibiting Dissections and Fibromuscular Dysplasia." Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology 40.11 (2020): 2686-2699.

    • Coleman, Dawn, B. Isabelle, Wang Y,..., Ganesh SK "NF1 Genetic Variation in Pediatric Artery Dysplasia is Associated With Vascular Smooth Muscle Cell MAPK Signaling Pathway Activation." Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology 40 (2020): A559-A559. (Conference Abstract)

    • Georges, Adrien, …, Wang Y, et al. "Rare Loss-of-function Mutations of PTGIR are enriched in Fibromuscular Dysplasia." Cardiovascular Research (2020).

    • Coleman, D*, Wang Y*, Hill H, Yang ML, Susan B, Kristina H, Stanley J, Ganesh SK. "Genomic Analysis of Neurofibromatosis-Related Vasculopathy." Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (2019): A370-A370. (Conference Abstract)


2) Cancer Heterogeneity: My previous research focused on the tumor heterogeneity. I conducted the first genomic studies on hepatocellular cellular carcinoma and identified the key genes response for migration and relapse, leading a high impact paper. I also participated and published the first genomic study on Mixed adenoneuroendocrine carcinoma (MANECs).

  • Yuan, W, Liu Z, Wang Y, …, Ke Y† "Clonal evolution of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma from normal mucosa to primary tumor and metastases." Carcinogenesis 40.12 (2019): 1445-1451.

  • Wang D, Niu X, Wang Z, Song CL, Huang Z, Chen KN, Duan J, Bai H, Xu J, Zhao J, Wang Y,..., Wang J† "Multiregion sequencing reveals the genetic heterogeneity and evolutionary history of osteosarcoma and matched pulmonary metastases." Cancer research 79.1 (2019): 7-20.

  • Yuan W, Liu Z, Lei W, Sun L,Yang H, Wang Y, ..., Li J†,Ke Y†. 2017 Jun “Mutation landscape and intra-tumor heterogeneity of two MANECs of the esophagus revealed by multi-region sequencing.” Oncotarget 8 (2017), 69610-69621

  • Wang Y*, Yuan W*, Liu M,..., Ke Y†, Li J †. Jul “Mutation signatures and intratumor heterogeneity of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in a Chinese cohort “ Cancer Research 76 (2016), 2397-2397. (Conference Abstract)

  • Tao Y*, Ruan J*, Yeh SH*, Lu X*, Wang Y*, Zhai W*, Cai J*,..., Chen DS†, Chen PJ†, Wu CI†. "Rapid growth of a hepatocellular carcinoma and the driving mutations revealed by cell-population genetic analysis of whole-genome data." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108.29 (2011): 12042-12047.


3) Genomic and bioinformatics technology: I also participated in a lot of genomic tools research. I presented my research on mouse genetic or computational tools, either by talk or abstract. I also utilized next generation sequencing technology to resolve the origin of cultivated rice and published the first dual-platform sequencing on the rice genome. This paper solved the long debate on the rice origin and gain attention from both scientific (cited by many important papers) and public media (eg. the New York Times).

  • Wang Y, Jun Z Li. “Integrated somatic mutation detection from tumor-normal sequencing data using multiple calling methods” American Society of Human Genetics 2017. (Conference Abstract)

  • Wang Y*, Ren YY*, Jun Z Li. “Genetic mechanism of aerobic capacity and metabolic disease in Rat model” International Mammalian Genome Meeting 2015 (Conference Talk)

  • He Z*, Zhai W*, Wen H*, Tang T, Wang Y, Lu X, Greenberg AJ, Hudson RR, Wu CI†, Shi S.†. "Two evolutionary histories in the genome of rice: the roles of domestication genes." PLoS Genetics 7.6 (2011): e1002100.

  • Zhou Y*, Lu C*, Wu QJ*, Wang Y, Sun ZT, Deng JC, Zhang Y.†. "GISSD: group I intron sequence and structure database." Nucleic Acids Research 36.suppl 1 (2008): D31-D37.



Last update: 03/28/2021