Research Interests
Dr. Cheng’s laboratory focuses on developing genomic technologies to enable scientific discovery. In addition to running and improving the DNA synthesis and single-cell genomics pipelines at JGI, his laboratory has two other research focuses:
- To develop experimental and computational tools to study single cell genomes and transcriptomes of unicellular protists and fungi.
- To explore methods of performing genomic DNA engineering in living cells.
Research Team
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| Jan-Fang Cheng, PI | Doina Ciobanu, Senior Research Associate | Ze Peng, Principle Research Associate | David Robinson, Senior Research Associate |
| JFCheng@lbl.gov | dgciobanu@lbl.gov | zpenG@lbl.gov | dsrobinson@lbl.gov |
| More about Jan-Fang. | Doina is leading the efforts of developing laboratory procedure and computational tools of studying single cell genomics and transcriptomics of unicellular eukaryotes. | Ze is developing molecular biology tools and procedures for in vivo genome editing by using the cas9-CRISPR strategy. | Dave is working on prokaryotic host engineering. |
Publications
Jan-Fang Cheng Bio
Education
- BS in Agronmy, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
- MS in Genetics, Pennsylvania State University, PA
- PhD in Molecular Cell Biology, Pennsylvania State University, PA
- Postdoctoral training in Genetics and Development, Columbia University, NY
Research History
Following the postdoctoral training, Dr. Cheng joined the Human Genome Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1989, which later became the Joint Genome Institute in 1997. During this time, he led the efforts of generating clone-based maps and localizing novel transcripts on human chromosome 21. His group has also completed the chromosomes 5 clone-base maps as a part of the human genome project. In early 2000, he co-led a program project that utilizes comparative genomics approach to identify evolutionarily conserved noncoding elements and understand how they regulate expression of genes. In 2006, Dr. Cheng led the process optimization and the cloning technology groups at the JGI where his group had developed applications and improved technologies of next generation sequencing and sequencing library construction. In 2011, he has become the functional genomics group lead that oversees the operation of micro-scale application and synthetic biology groups and plays a leading role in developing technologies to improve single cell genomics and enable in vivo genomic DNA engineering.