Wei Sun, PhD | Department of Genetics

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Wei Sun, PhD
Assistant Professor

Research Interests

Key words: eQTL studies, tiling array data analysis, statistical genetics, dimension reduction, multiple testing.

With the advance of microarray technique and the accumulation of DNA sequence information, the study of living organism in system level has become more and more popular. The data may include genome-wide DNA polymorphism information (e.g., genotype of thousands to millions of SNPs, DNA copy number variations), epigenetic information (e.g., nucleosome occupancy, histone modification), genome-wide gene expression data, protein interaction data, as well as phenotype data. How to handle and analyze such comprehensive data is the general interest of my research. Currently, I focus on the following specific topics:

1. The signal propagation from DNA polymorphism to gene expression. We combine the DNA polymorphism data, gene expression data, and transcription regulation data to reveal the possible roles of transcription factors in gene expression linkage. (Sun et al., 2007, bioinformatics).

2. The statistical methods to analyze tiling array data. We have developed a method based on segmental semi-Markov model to detect nucleosome free regions. (Sun et al., 2007, submitted). We are working to extend this method, or modification of this method to other tilling array data.

3. Dynamic linkage of complex traits, which can be clinical traits, e.g., body fat, or gene expression traits. We employ Liquid Association method (Li, PNAS, 2002) to identify the dynamic correlation between two complex traits (Sun et al., 2007, submitted) or between one complex trait and DNA polymorphism (Sun et al., 2007, manuscript in preparation).

4. The relation between phenotype and gene expression. The phenotype can be tumor labels (Sun et al., 2007, manuscript in preparation), or survival time with censored data (Wu et al., 2007, manuscript in preparation).

5. Large scale association studies with thousands to millions of SNPs and/or thousands of complex traits. We focus on the statistical challenges of dimension reduction and false discovery rates evaluation.

Publications

Wei Sun*, Wei Xie*, Feng Xu, Michael Grunstein, Ker-Chau Li (2007) Pattern recognition in tiling array ChIP-chip data by segmental semi-Markov model, with application in nucleosome free region study, submitted. (*Authors contribute equally)

Wei Sun, Shinsheng Yuan, and Ker-Chau Li (2007), Trait-trait dynamic interaction: 2D-trait eQTL mapping for genetic variation study, submitted.

Wei Sun, Tianwei Yu and Ker-Chau Li (2007), Detection of eQTL modules mediated by activity levels of transcription factors, Bioinformatics, in press.

Tianwei Yu, Hui Ye, Wei Sun, Ker-Chau Li, Zugen Chen, Sharoni Jacobs, Dione K Bailey, David T Wong and Xiaofeng Zhou, (2007) A forward-backward fragment assembling algorithm for the identification of amplification and deletion breakpoints using high-density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array, BMC bioinformatics, 8:145

Tianwei Yu, Wei Sun, Shinsheng Yuan and Ker-Chau Li (2005), Study of coordinative gene expression at the biological process level, Bioinformatics, 21(18), 3651-3657

Ker-Chau Li, Ching-Ti Liu, Wei Sun, Shinsheng Yuan and Tianwei Yu (2004), A system for enhancing genome-wide coexpression dynamics study, PNAS, 101(44), 15561-15566

3104E McGavran-Greenberg Hall
CB 7420
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7420

Phone: 919-966-7266
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