Dr Angli Xue

Angli Xue is a Postdoc Scientist in Powell Lab at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. He obtained his PhD in 2021 at The University of Queensland working with Prof. Jian Yang in the field of statistical genetics. During the PhD, he utilized statistical and computational methods to dissect the genetic architecture of human complex diseases, perform meta-analyses and integrate multi-omics data to identify associated gene loci and gene regulatory mechanisms. He conducted the largest genetic study of type 2 diabetes and highlighted three T2D-associated genes with plausible regulatory mechanisms where a genetic variant exerts an effect on T2D through epigenetic regulation of gene expression. He also co-developed a software tool (GSMR2) for evaluating the causal relationship between modifiable risk factors and complex diseases. He was awarded the DeLill Nasser Award for Professional Development in Genetics and the Chinese Scholarship Council Award for Outstanding Students Abroad in recognization of his PhD work. Before moving to Australia, he completed the BSc at Zhejiang University in 2015.

Angli's current research is focused on identifying the genetic control of gene expression variability at the single-cell level. To achieve this goal, he is developing novel statistical methods for single-cell eQTL mapping and applying them to the OneK1K cohort which contains gene expression profiles of ~1000 peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from ~1000 individuals. This work may help to understand how genetic variants contribute to the immune disease risk at a cellular level.

Angli is actively participating in scientific community service and serves as an early career reviewer in GENETICS. He was also an ad hoc reviewer for many journals including Nature Medicine, Nature Human Behavior, Nucleic Acids Research, G3, EBioMedicine, etc.