CV

EDUCATION

• Ph.D. in Genetics The University of Chicago, Oct., 2018 - Dec., 2023

• Bachelar of Science University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sept., 2014 - Jul., 2018

CURRENT EXPERIENCE

Postdoctoral Fellow
Mentor: Dr. Soumya Raychaudhuri, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Broad Institute.
Jan. 2024 - present

PUBLICATIONS

Yuriy Baglaenko, Zepeng Mu, Michelle Curtis, Hafsa M. Mire, Vidyashree Jayanthi, Majd Al Suqri, Cassidy Liu, Ryan Agnew, Aparna Nathan, Annelise Yoo Mah-Som, David R. Liu, Gregory A. Newby, Soumya Raychaudhuri. Precisely defining disease variant effects in CRISPR-edited single cells. Nature (2025).

Zepeng Mu, Haley E. Randolph, Raúl Aguirre-Gamboa, Ellen Ketter, Anne Dumaine, Veronica Locher, Cary Brandolino, Xuanyao Liu, Daniel E. Kaufmann, Luis B. Barreiro, Yang I. Li. Impact of disease-associated chromatin accessibility QTLs across immune cell types and contexts. medRxiv (2024).

Yu Zhao, Ran Zhou, Zepeng Mu, Peter Carbonetto, Xiaoyuan Zhong, Bingqing Xie, Kaixuan Luo, Candace M Cham, Jason Koval, Xin He, Andrew W. Dahl, Xuanyao Liu, Eugene B Chang, Anindita Basu, Sebastian Pott. Cell-type-resolved chromatin accessibility in the human intestine identifies complex regulatory programs and clarifies genetic associations in Crohn’s disease. medRxiv (2024).

Guimin Gao, Julian McClellan, Alvaro N. Barbeira, Peter N. Fiorica, James L. Li, Zepeng Mu, Olufunmilayo I. Olopade, Dezheng Huo, Hae Kyung Im. “A multi-tissue, splicing-based joint transcriptome-wide association study identifies susceptibility genes for breast cancer”. American Journal of Human Genetics (2024).

Haley E. Randolph, Katherine A. Aracena, Yen‐Lung Lin, Zepeng Mu, and Luis B. Barreiro. “Shaping immunity: The influence of natural selection on population immune diversity.” Immunological Reviews (2024).

Katherine A Aracena, Yen-Lung Lin, Kaixuan Luo, Alain Pacis, Saideep Gona, Zepeng Mu, Vania Yotova, Renata Sindeaux, Albena Pramatarova, Marie-Michelle Simon, Xun Chen, Cristian Groza, David Lougheed, Romain Gregoire, David Brownlee, Carly Boye, Roger Pique-Regi, Yang I. Li, Xin He, David Bujold, Tomi Pastinen, Guillaume Bourque, Luis B Barreiro. “Epigenetic variation impacts ancestry-associated differences in the transcriptional response to influenza infection.” Nature Genetics (2024).

Zepeng Mu, Wei Wei, Benjamin J. Fair, Jinlin Miao, Ping Zhu, and Yang I. Li. “The Impact of cell-type and context-dependent regulatory variants on human immune traits.” Genome Biology (2021).

Mengjie Chen, Qi Zhan, Zepeng Mu, Lili Wang, Zhaohui Zheng, Jinlin Miao, Ping Zhu, and Yang I. Li. “Alignment of single-cell RNA-seq samples without overcorrection using kernel density matching.” Genome Research (2021).

Peter Ebert, Peter A Audano, Qihui Zhu, Bernardo Rodriguez-Martin, […46 others…], Zepeng Mu … Evan E Eichler. “Haplotype-resolved diverse human genomes and integrated analysis of structural variation.” Science (2021).

Briana E. Mittleman, Sebastian Pott, Shane Warland, Tony Zeng, Zepeng Mu, Mayher Kaur, Yoav Gilad, and Yang I. Li. “Alternative polyadenylation mediates genetic regulation of gene expression.” eLife (2020).

Matthew R. Trendowski, Omar El-Charif, Mark J. Ratain, Patrick Monahan, Zepeng Mu et al. “Clinical and Genome-Wide Analysis of Serum Platinum Levels after Cisplatin-Based Chemotherapy.” Clinical Cancer Research (2019).

Zepeng Mu, Zhuoning Zou, Ye Yang et al. “A genetically engineered Escherichia coli that senses and degrades tetracycline antibiotic residue.” Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology (2018).

RESEARCH SKILLS

• Dry Lab: Molecular QTL mapping, bulk/single-cell RNA-seq/ATAC-seq analysis

• Wet Lab: CRISPR editing, Treg suppression assay, CUT&Tag, Molecular cloning

PAST EXPERIENCE

Ph.D. Candidate
Mentor: Dr. Yang I. Li, Section of Genetic Medicine, Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago.
Thesis: “Dissecting the Genetics of Human Autoimmune Diseases”
Dec. 2018 - Mar. 2024

Undergraduate Volunteer
Mentor: Dr. Eileen M. Dolan, Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago.
Project: “Genome-wide Association Study of Cytotoxicity due to Cisplatin-related Chemotherapy Agents”
Oct. 2017 - Mar. 2018

Undergraduate Volunteer
Mentor: Dr. Changqing Zeng, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Project: “Pathogenesis of Risk Loci Associated with type 2 diabetes on Chr9p21.3”
Aug. 2017 - Jul. 2018

Undergraduate Volunteer
Mentor: Dr. Deliang Chen, College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Project: “Biophysics of a Novel Sodium Ion Pump Bacteriorhodopsin NdR2”
Nov. 2016 - Jul. 2017

Undergraduate Volunteer
Mentor: Dr. Chunbo Lou, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Project: “Characterization of Bacteria Toxin-Antitoxin (TA) Systems for a Kill-switch in Engineered E. coli”
Website: UCAS iGEM 2016
Aug. 2016 - Nov. 2016

AWARDS

Oct. 2022, Reviewers’ Choice Abstracts, 2022 Annual Meeting of American Society of Human Genetics
Oct. 2022, Biological Sciences Division Traval Award, The University of Chicago
Jul. 2018, Beijing Outstanding College Thesis
Jul. 2018, Beijing Honored College Graduates
Nov. 2016, Silver Medal, international Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition
Nov. 2016, First-Class Scholarship, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences