Lei Hou, PhD

Assistant Professor, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

Biography

Dr. Hou is a computational and systems biologist. He aims to empower precision medicine in the treatment of complex diseases from three perspectives: dissecting the function of disease-associated genetic variants from GWAS, elucidating cellular machinery contributing to diseases, and modeling genetic and other risk factors that impact disease trajectories.

Dr. Hou has over 15 years of research experience and has made significant contributions to the field of regulatory genomics and disease genetics, 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 presented his research at several top-class national seminars and international conferences, including the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics, Keystone conference of Epigenetics in Development and Disease, 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 5/15/2026

    Hou L, Li Y, Xiong X, Tanigawa Y, Park Y, Lenz SW, Grayson A, Lee JH, Ryu E, Olson JE, Biernacka JM, Frye MA, Ordog T, Kellis M. Genotype epigenome phenotype integration reveals peripheral immune contributions to type I bipolar disorder. Nat Commun. 2026 May 15. PMID: 42140902.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 5/1/2026

    Tao Q, Han J, Ang TFA, Hou L, Liu C, Murabito JM, Lunetta KL, Mez J, Alosco ML, Stein TD, Zhang X, Au R, Farrer L, Palmisano JN, Hamburg NM, Qiu WQ. Peripheral vascular function, including endothelium-dependent measures, and dementia risk: The Framingham Heart Study. Alzheimers Dement. 2026 May; 22(5):e71396. PMID: 42050369.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 11/1/2025

    Dacey R, Hou L, Gurnani A, Han X, Paller-Moore MR, Chung J, Durape S, Rosenthaler M, Uretsky M, Abdolmohammadi B, Lee AJ, Brickman AM, Hohman TJ, Cuccaro ML, Bennett DA, Crane PK, Kamboh MI, Kukull WA, Jun G, Stein TD, McKee AC, Haines JL, Pericak-Vance MA, Wang LS, Schellenberg GD, Mayeux R, Lunetta KL, Farrer LA, Mez J. Alzheimer's disease multi-ancestry genome-wide interaction and stratified study with smoking. Alzheimers Dement. 2025 Nov; 21(11):e70922. PMID: 41268768.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 8/1/2025

    Liu Z, Zhang S, James BT, Galani K, Mangan RJ, Fass SB, Liang C, Wagle MM, Boix CA, Tanigawa Y, Yun S, Sung Y, Xiong X, Sun N, Hou L, Wohlwend M, Qiu M, Han X, Xiong L, Preka E, Huang L, Li WF, Ho LL, Grayson A, Mantero J, Kozlenkov A, Mathys H, Chen T, Dracheva S, Bennett DA, Tsai LH, Kellis M. Single-cell multiregion epigenomic rewiring in Alzheimer's disease progression and cognitive resilience. Cell. 2025 Sep 04; 188(18):4980-5002.e29. PMID: 40752494.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 5/7/2025

    Libera JL, Hu J, Nguyen TA, Wang Z, van der Spek SJF, Schult K, Dorrian L, Majka J, Tobunluepop K, Puri S, Kynshov A, Kanaan NM, Nelson PT, Meyer K, Hou L, Zhang X, Wolozin B. Loss of age-associated increase in m6A-modified RNA contributes to GABAergic dysregulation in Alzheimer's disease. bioRxiv. 2025 May 07. PMID: 40654675.

    Read at: PubMed

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Websites

Education

  • Chinese Academy of Sciences, PhD
  • Tsinghua University, BE/BEng

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