Rongxin Zhang

The greatest truths are the simplest.

About Me

Hi, I'm Rongxin, and welcome!
I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. Prior to this, I received my Ph.D. from the State Key Laboratory of Digital Medical Engineering at Southeast University, during which I did part of my Ph.D. training in Dr. Jean-Louis Mergny's lab at École Polytechnique in France.

My Ph.D. projects involved uncovering the regulatory role of G-quadruplexes (G4s), special non-B nucleic acid secondary structures, and their implication in diseases.

Moving forward, and with the goal of unlocking the secrets hidden within the "Book of Heaven" (the human genome), my research interests lie in the analysis and interpretation of large-scale human multi-omics data through bioinformatics approaches. More specifically, I aim to understand and elucidate the regulatory mechanisms of the human genome—for example, the impact of sequence variants and chromatin-level regulatory features on genome function—and how their dysregulation contributes to the development and progression of human diseases, such as cancer. In addition, I am passionate about applying machine learning methods to model and address unresolved challenges in biology and medicine.

Education

Research Interests

• Cancer Epigenomics & Epigenetics
• Gene Regulatory Mechanisms
• Human Constrained Sequences, Functional Sequences, and Their Variants
• Machine Learning Applications in Biology
• Non-canonical Nucleic Acid Secondary Structures, particularly G-quadruplexes
• Bioinformatics Software & Database Development

News

  Events

• [ Dec. 2024] Our G4SNVHunter package was released in the devel branch of Bioconductor. This R package was designed to evaluate the impact of small-scale variants on G4 formation propensity. The vignette is available at this link.
  
  
• [ Jul. 2024] Rongxin successfully defended his PhD dissertation! 🎉🎉
  
• [ Apr. 2024] The Second Bioinformatics Academic Conference of the Yangtze River Delta was successfully held in Shanghai. Rongxin delivered a presentation titled 'Structure Matters: Unraveling G-Quadruplex Influence on Regulatory Elements' as a young scholar and was awarded the third prize for Best Young Scholar Presentation.
  
• [ Nov. 2023] The 13th Bioinformatics Conference of Jiangsu Province was successfully held at Nantong University. Rongxin won the first prize for the poster exhibition.
  
• [ Sept. 2023] The International Symposium on Human Genomics was successfully held at the CNRS headquarters in Paris. Rongxin presented a poster showing his latest research progress on how G-quadruplexes affect the use of promoters.
  
• [ Jun. 2023] École Polytechnique (scheduled at the Pasteur Institute but changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic) successfully hosted the 'Quadruplexes Made in France' day.
  Fifteen researchers from all over France in the field of G4 presented fascinating reports!
  
• [ Jun. 2023] Professor Kateryna Makova from Pennsylvania State University delivered a presentation titled 'Non-B DNA and Evolution of Our Genomes' at the Laboratory for optics & biosciences, upon the invitation of Professor Jean-Louis Mergny from École Polytechnique.
  
• [ Jun. 2023] Rongxin participated in the G4 ANR seminar held in Marseille and gave an oral presentation.
• [ Mar. 2023] The Ph.D. student I supervised at École Polytechnique, Kardelen, successfully defended her project. [Investigation of Promoter-G4 Oncogenes]
• [ Oct. 2022] Start my Ph.D. visit at École Polytechnique in Paris, France.
• [ Jul. 2022] Oral presentation at the 2022 Young Scholars Forum on Bioinformatics and Artificial Intelligence. [Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence]

  Publications

• [ Aug. 2024] Our latest research on uncovering the relationship between G-quadruplexes and cis-regulatory elements is now published in BMC Biology!
• [ Aug. 2024] Our study on long non-coding RNAs in breast cancer, revealing their role in gene expression and regulatory networks, is now available in International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
• [ Apr. 2024] Our latest research on how G4 regulates NRP1 gene expression and promotes the invasion of SARS-CoV-2 is now publicly available in International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
• [ Sept. 2023] Our latest research article on describing the Highly Transcribed Noncoding Elements (HTNEs) in breast cancer has been published in Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal.
• [ Sept. 2023] Our latest article, which characterizes the G4s in CYP family genes, is now available online in Biochimie.
• [ Apr. 2023] Our work on radiomics subtypes of hepatocellular carcinoma was published in Cancers.
• [ Feb. 2023] Our research article on the association of G4s with structural variants in cancers was available (online first) in Cancer Research! 🎉🎉
• [ Feb. 2023] Our latest research article on the prediction of in vivo G-quadruplex genome structures has now been published online in Biomolecules.
• [ Apr. 2022] We published a review article summarizing that G4 binding proteins are promising drug targets, which can be found at Biomolecules.

Data in this module collected since 2022

Fundings

• [No. 61972084] The National Natural Science Foundation of China. (Participant, Ranked 4th)
• [No. KYCX21_0143] The Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province. (Project Host)

Academic Services

Journal Reviewers

• Genome Biology
• Frontiers in Immunology
• Biochimie
• Scientific Reports

Selected Publications

Books

Oral Presentations

Keep in touch with me

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