Qiaolin Deng receives Karolinska Institutet’s Consolidator grant and VR Consolidator grant
Associate professor and Research Group Leader Qiaolin Deng, at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, received up to 1.2 million SEK per year over five years (KI consolidator grant) and 2 million SEK per year over six years (VR consolidator grant).
– It has been a rewarding year to the lab to be granted with both KI and VR consolidator grants. These two grants not only give us the best opportunity to consolidate our current research but also encourage us to invest in some long-term projects for the method development and translational research says Associate professor Qiaolin Deng.
Ongoing projects
– Currently, we have three major projects running in the lab. The first one is to characterization of the spatial and temporal regulation of epigenetic resetting and clonal propagation of germ cells by genetic lineage tracing combined with single-cell sequencing.
– The second one is using PCOS-like mouse models to study the effects of maternal hyperandrogenism on developmental programming and germline-involved epigenetic inheritance. This work is in close collaboration with the Elisabet Stener-Victorin’s lab.
– The third project is to use in vitro hESC differentiation assay to model germline formation to understand causes of infertility and reveal genetic and epigenetic errors that originate in the germline says Qiaolin Deng.
In future, we aim to further develop the single-cell sequencing method and also apply single cell methods to human studies including placenta, endometrium tissue and germ cell tumors.
Research in PCOS and Klinefelter disease
– The most relevantly diseases related to our current projects are PCOS and Klinefelter disease. For PCOS disease, we aim to understand the developmental programming and germline transmission contributing to it's increased prevalence. For Klinefelter disease, we want to understand the detrimental effect of extra X chromosome in germline specification.
Project participants
– My lab is relatively small now with two PhD students and two postdocs. So, everyone is involved in the projects with one person to take the lead. Next year, we look forward to welcoming two more postdocs and one PhD student. Most importantly, we closely collaborate with Stener-Victorin’s lab who sits in the same quarter with us.