Lei Hou, PhD
Assistant Professor, Medicine
Biography
Dr. Hou is a computational and systems biologist. He has over 15 years of research experience and has made significant contributions to the field of regulatory genomics and disease genetics. In the past seven years at MIT, Dr. Hou has led several impactful projects, including a study of human primordial germ cell differentiation with time series single-cell RNA-seq data, the study of genetics of m6A and H3K27ac signals and their implications in complex diseases, and the investigation of immune roles in bipolar disorder. he has collaborated with leading researchers from various institutions, including Harvard, UCLA, Carnegie Mellon University, Mayo Clinic, Broad Institute, Mass General Hospital, Pfizer, and Zhejiang University.
Dr. Hou has presented his research at several top-class national seminars and international conferences, including Broad Institute medical/population genetics and Cell Circuits/Epigenomics seminars, the American Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meeting on Systems Biology, and the CSHL Asia Meeting on Molecular Basis of Aging and Disease. Dr Hou’s co-first authored work has also been published in high-impact journals, including Cell Metabolism, Nature Genetics, Cell Reports, and Aging Cell. He also served as an ad hoc reviewer for high-profiled journals including eLife, Aging Cell, Cell Reports, Frontiers in Genetics, Computers in Biology and Medicine, Current in Bioinformatics, Frontiers in Microbiology, Mathematical Biosciences, International Conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB).
Dr. Hou received his BE degree in the Department of Automation, Tsinghua University (thesis supervisors: Drs. Xuegong Zhang and Jing-Dong Jackie Han), his Ph.D. of bioinformatics from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Supervisor: Dr. Jing-Dong Jackie Han), his postdoc trainings at Partner Institute for Computational Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (with Dr. Jing-Dong Jackie Han), and at Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT (with Dr. Manolis Kellis).
Publications
- Published on 9/28/2023
Hou L, Xiong X, Park Y, Boix C, James B, Sun N, He L, Patel A, Zhang Z, Molinie B, Van Wittenberghe N, Steelman S, Nusbaum C, Aguet F, Ardlie KG, Kellis M. Multitissue H3K27ac profiling of GTEx samples links epigenomic variation to disease. Nat Genet. 2023 Oct; 55(10):1665-1676. PMID: 37770633.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 9/28/2023
Xiong X, James BT, Boix CA, Park YP, Galani K, Victor MB, Sun N, Hou L, Ho LL, Mantero J, Scannail AN, Dileep V, Dong W, Mathys H, Bennett DA, Tsai LH, Kellis M. Epigenomic dissection of Alzheimer's disease pinpoints causal variants and reveals epigenome erosion. Cell. 2023 Sep 28; 186(20):4422-4437.e21. PMID: 37774680.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 7/1/2021
Xiong X, Hou L, Park YP, Molinie B, Gregory RI, Kellis M. Genetic drivers of m6A methylation in human brain, lung, heart and muscle. Nat Genet. 2021 Aug; 53(8):1156-1165. PMID: 34211177.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 5/16/2021
Guo F, Hou L, Ma C, Li G, Lin R, Zhao Y, Wang X. Comparative transcriptome analysis of the peanut semi-dwarf mutant 1 reveals regulatory mechanism involved in plant height. Gene. 2021 Jul 30; 791:145722. PMID: 34010708.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 7/29/2020
Moore JE, Purcaro MJ, Pratt HE, Epstein CB, Shoresh N, Adrian J, Kawli T, Davis CA, Dobin A, Kaul R, Halow J, Van Nostrand EL, Freese P, Gorkin DU, Shen Y, He Y, Mackiewicz M, Pauli-Behn F, Williams BA, Mortazavi A, Keller CA, Zhang XO, Elhajjajy SI, Huey J, Dickel DE, Snetkova V, Wei X, Wang X, Rivera-Mulia JC, Rozowsky J, Zhang J, Chhetri SB, Zhang J, Victorsen A, White KP, Visel A, Yeo GW, Burge CB, Lécuyer E, Gilbert DM, Dekker J, Rinn J, Mendenhall EM, Ecker JR, Kellis M, Klein RJ, Noble WS, Kundaje A, Guigó R, Farnham PJ, Cherry JM, Myers RM, Ren B, Graveley BR, Gerstein MB, Pennacchio LA, Snyder MP, Bernstein BE, Wold B, Hardison RC, Gingeras TR, Stamatoyannopoulos JA, Weng Z. Expanded encyclopaedias of DNA elements in the human and mouse genomes. Nature. 2020 Jul; 583(7818):699-710. PMID: 32728249.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 12/24/2019
Chen D, Sun N, Hou L, Kim R, Faith J, Aslanyan M, Tao Y, Zheng Y, Fu J, Liu W, Kellis M, Clark A. Human Primordial Germ Cells Are Specified from Lineage-Primed Progenitors. Cell Rep. 2019 Dec 24; 29(13):4568-4582.e5. PMID: 31875561.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 2/26/2018
Yang H, Tian W, Wang S, Liu X, Wang Z, Hou L, Ge J, Zhang X, He Z, Wang X. TSG-6 secreted by bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells attenuates intervertebral disc degeneration by inhibiting the TLR2/NF-?B signaling pathway. Lab Invest. 2018 Jun; 98(6):755-772. PMID: 29483622.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 10/11/2017
Enhancing GTEx by bridging the gaps between genotype, gene expression, and disease. Nat Genet. 2017 Dec; 49(12):1664-1670. PMID: 29019975.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 3/8/2016
Hou L, Wang D, Chen D, Liu Y, Zhang Y, Cheng H, Xu C, Sun N, McDermott J, Mair WB, Han JD. A Systems Approach to Reverse Engineer Lifespan Extension by Dietary Restriction. Cell Metab. 2016 Mar 08; 23(3):529-40. PMID: 26959186.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 6/22/2015
Chen M, Tang W, Hou L, Liu R, Dong Z, Han X, Zhang X, Wan D, Yu S. Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF) -308G>A, Nitric Oxide Synthase 3 (NOS3) +894G>T Polymorphisms and Migraine Risk: A Meta-Analysis. PLoS One. 2015; 10(6):e0129372. PMID: 26098763.
Read at: PubMed
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