Awarded in 2011
Home Department: Chemical & Systems Biology
Faculty Advisors: Margaret Fuller (Developmental Biology) and Paul Khavari (Dermatology)

Research Title: Regulation of gene expression in an adult stem cell lineage by transcriptional repression

Research Description: Most of our tissues are constantly replenished by tissue specific adult stem cells. The goal of Jongmin’s research is to understand how the switch from proliferation to differentiation in adult stem cell lineages is regulated. He has developed an in vivo differentiation system that can trigger proliferating progenitor cells to synchronously differentiate in the male germ line of fruit flies. By employing this differentiation assay, he will identify genes critical for the switch and will determine how those genes are regulated. Understanding this switch will be important in regenerative medicine and cancer therapy.

WHERE IS HE NOW?

Jongmin is a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Robert Kingston’s lab at the Massachusetts General Hospital.