Histone Acetylome-wide Association Study of Autism Spectrum Disorder.Li H, Courtois ET, Sengupta D, Tan Y, Chen KH, Goh JJL, Kong SL, Chua C, Hon LK, Tan WS, Wong M, Choi PJ, Wee LJK, Hillmer AM, Tan IB, Robson P, Prabhakar S. Reference component analysis of single-cell transcriptomes elucidates cellular heterogeneity in human colorectal tumors.Postdoctoral fellows: Machine Learning and Mathematical Analysis of Spatial Transcriptomics Dataīioinformatics Specialists: Machine Learning and Genome Data Analytic HCA Barcelona 2019, HCA Equity Addis Ababa 2019ģrd Annual HCA Asia Meeting, Singapore: Single Cell Algorithms Human Cell Atlas, Asian Immune Diversity Atlas (AIDA): Labroots webinar: Single cell algorithms, application to colorectal cancer Straits Times interview: Histone acetylation changes in autismĬhannel News Asia interview: Histone acetylation changes in autism Earlier work explored the contribution of gene regulatory elements to human origins ( Prabhakar, Noonan et al., Science 2006 Prabhakar et al., Science 2008).Ĭentre for Big Data and Integrative Genomics (c-BIG) We have also uncovered fundamental properties of transcription factor binding to genomic DNA ( Jankowski et al., Genome Res 2013) and demonstrated that H2BK20ac is a distinctive signature of enhancers and cell-type-specific promoters ( Kumar, Rayan, Muratani et al., Genome Res 2016). Major achievements include the first single-cell transcriptomic analysis of colorectal tumors ( Li, Courtois et al., Nat Genet 2017), the first study of histone acetylation changes in autism spectrum disorder ( Sun, Poschmann et al., Cell 2016), the first large-scale study of variants that alter histone acetylation and contribute to disease susceptibility ( del Rosario, Poschmann et al., Nat Methods 2015) and the first unified signal-processing method for peak detection in whole-genome profiling data ( Kumar et al., Nat Biotechnol 2013). The methods we develop have spawned research collaborations with multiple industry partners spanning biotech, IT and pharma. For example, we are engaged in team science to discover markers of immunotherapy response and develop new imaging-based diagnostic technologies.
In addition to curiosity-driven science, we pursue inventions and discoveries that will (hopefully) make a difference in the world. This involves statistics, machine learning and extensive benchmarking for performance and scalability. We also develop cutting-edge algorithms and pipelines for deriving biological insights from large datasets. In particular, we use single-cell RNA-seq, cohort-scale histone ChIP-seq and other NGS technologies to understand autism, psychiatric drug response, lung and colon cancer, chronic myeloid leukemia, autoimmune disorders and host response to infection. The Prabhakar Lab uses a combination of high-throughput omics assays (wet-lab) and data analytics (dry-lab) to study gene-regulatory mechanisms of human diseases. Thus, gene regulation lies at the heart of disease mechanisms and treatment response. In addition, transcriptional and epigenetic dysregulation are known to drive tumorigenesis, tumor progression and drug resistance. The majority of genetic mutations responsible for common diseases reside within gene-regulatory sequences such as enhancers, promoters and insulators. Disease Mechanisms, Therapeutics, Diagnostics, Omics, Algorithms, Data Analysis