I am an Assistant Professor of Pathology, and I have a broad background in liver diseases, with specific training and expertise in hepatotoxicity, fatty liver diseases, gut-liver interaction, and laboratory medicine. My research includes basic and translational research in alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD), cholestatic liver disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), obesity, and environmental hepatotoxicity.
I laid the groundwork for the proposed research by developing effective in vivo animal models and in vitro models, and by applying novel techniques including spatial transcriptomics, single-cell RNA sequencing, bulk RNA sequencing, metabolome analysis, miRNA array, proteomic analysis, 16S sequencing analysis, and other molecular biology technologies. My doctoral thesis focused on the mechanistic discoveries of hepatotoxicity of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Specifically, I found the alteration of circulating microRNA profiles in mice following PFOA exposure and elucidated several novel mechanisms (e.g. activation of SREBPs, inhibition of autophagy, and activation of ER-stress) of PFOA-induced hepatic steatosis and injury. My postdoctoral work has extended my expertise in hepatotoxicity to autophagy-related liver dysfunction, ALD, and NAFLD. By using multiple different mouse strains, I tested the impact of hepatic autophagy deficiency on ALD, and the impact of gut microbiota on autophagy deficiency-induced liver dysfunction and diet-induced obesity.
I successfully collaborated with other researchers and produced many peer-reviewed publications from each project including Hepatology, Autophagy, Cell Mol Gastroenterol Hepatol, Free Radic Biol Med, Arch Toxicol, et al. My current research interests include 1) cholestasis and ALD; 2) the role of autophagy in liver pathophysiology; 3) the formation and physiological functions of protein condensates in liver diseases, e.g. Mallory-Denk body; and 4) the impact of immunometabolism on the progression of NAFLD/NASH.
