XIAO Lab

Welcome to the Xiao Lab @ UCLA

We use computational and experimental approaches to study the biology of gene regulation from a systems point of view.

With similar number of genes as in simpler organisms, mammals demonstrate an amazing degree of phenotypic diversity. Mammalian gene expression is under tight regulation temporally and spatially, which contributes to the formation of different cell types, tissues, and organs. Gene regulation involves a complex network of players, including multiple DNA, RNA sequence elements and RNA and protein factors. These regulators interact with each other and carry out combinatorial regulatory functions.

Current focus of our lab pertains to the regulation of gene expression at the RNA level via the process of pre-mRNA splicing and other post-transcriptional (or co-transcriptional) mechanisms. We use a combination of techniques and approaches in molecular biology and computational biology, such as high-throughput sequencing, array-based gene expression, comparative genomics and biological network modeling.