Dr Rob Young

Lecturer (Zhejiang)

Biography

Background

2019 – Present: Lecturer (Zhejiang)

2012 – 2019: Research Associate, MRC Human Genetics Unit, University of Edinburgh

2007 – 2011: DPhil, MRC Functional Genomics Unit, University of Oxford (Evolution and Function of long noncoding RNAs in Drosophila)

2005 - 2006: MSc in Quantitative Genetics and Genome Analysis, University of Edinburgh (Evidence of Selection in the Genome of Staphylococcus aureus)

2002 - 2005: BA in Natural Sciences (Biological), University of Cambridge 

Undergraduate teaching

Assistant Professor at the Zhejiang University - University of Edinburgh (ZJE) Institute, where I teach various courses in the Biomedical Informatics and Integrated Biomedical Sciences undergraduate degree programmes.

I am the course organiser for the first-year course 'Introduction to Biomedical Informatics'. 

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Current PhD students supervised

Shenyi Zhang

Caitlin McNiff

Junping Shi (co-supervised with Dr Xianghua Li, Sanger Institute, Cambridge and Dr Matt Brook, CVS)

Natasha Arzoo (co-supervised with Dr Matt Book, CVS)

Benjamin Fletcher (co-supervised with Prof Jim Wilson and Dr Athina Spiliopoulou, Usher Institute)

 

Yashi Gu (ZJE PhD student, co-supervised with Dr Di Chen)

Jiaqi Wang (ZJE PhD student, co-supervised with Dr Kuan Yoow Chan)

Yueqing Xu (ZJE PhD student, co-supervised with Dr Chaochen Wang)

Xia Sun (ZJE PhD student, co-supervised with Prof Stijn Van Der Veen)

Yeyu Wei (ZJE PhD student, co-supervised with Dr Zhaoyuan Fang)

Jiongxin Wang (ZJE PhD student, co-supervised with Dr Wanlu Liu)

 

Research summary

Mapping noncoding regulation in populations

Investigating how variation in complex traits and disease is driven by variation in the genomic content of noncoding, regulatory loci.

It is now almost routinely possible to identify genetic mutations across the human genome which drive disease or regulate complex human traits. However, the majority of these mutations are found in noncoding regions beyond the borders of known genes which makes their interpretation challenging. These noncoding regions encode a range of regulatory functions to control when and where genes are expressed.

Promoters and enhancers represent such types of noncoding loci, responsible for regulating gene expression  and which are significantly enriched for these phenotypically-associated variants. I have shown that these elements have undergone pervasive birth and death during mammalian evolution. Surprisingly, it is those elements which are evolutionarily volatile which are most likely to harbour functionally important, regulatory variants within the human population.

My research studies the regulatory landscape of the human genome to discover how its rewiring drives variation in medical phenotypes and disease risk across individuals, populations and species.

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