Dr John Lai
Position:
- Research Scientist, Australian Prostate Cancer Research Centre - Queensland
- Research Scientist, Quensland University of Technology, Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation
Credentials:
- PhD at Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology
Biography:
Dr Lai has been studying cancer genetics throughout his research career. His studies focus on genetic differences that predispose men to develop prostate cancer or which might predict the likely severity of their disease. He particularly focuses on genetic differences within genes or the promoters of genes that are regulated by androgens, which are an important mediator of prostate cancer progression.
Dr Lai has undertaken postdoctoral training at the University of Southern California (USC) under the mentorship of Prof. Coetzee. At USC, Dr Lai developed skills in RNAseq and ChIPseq that enables him to identify prostate cancer genes or promoter/enhancer elements in men on a genome-wide scale.
Continuing his skills in RNAseq and ChIPseq, Dr Lai has transitioned into computational biology where he develops computer programs to better understand prostate cancer in men. More recently, his research has focused on short tandem repeats (STRs) as genetic markers that might account for some of the missing prostate cancer heritability. His work typically involves using clinical prostate tumour samples, and blood isolated from men with and without prostate cancer.
Best publications:
- An J, Lai J, Wood DLA, Sajjanhar A, Wang C, Tevz G, Lehman ML, Nelson CC. RNASeqBrowser: A genome browser for simultaneous visualization of raw strand specific RNAseq reads and UCSC genome browser custom tracks. BMC Genomics. 2015 March 1. doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1346-2 [Epub ahead of print]
- An J, Lai J, Zeng Lingzao, Nelson CC. Analysis of Differential Gene Expression Based on Bayesian Estimation of Variance. Current Bioinformatics. 2015 [Accepted]
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Jiyuan An, John Lai, Atul Sajjanhar, Jyotsna Batra, Chenwei Wang, Colleen C. Nelson. J-Circos: An Interactive Circos plotter. Bioinformatics. 2014 Dec 24. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btu842.
- Lai J, Batra J. Speckle-type POZ protein mutations interrupt tumor suppressor function of speckle-type POZ protein in prostate cancer by affecting androgen receptor degradation. Asian J Androl, 2014 Sept-Oct. doi: 10.4103/1008-682X.133323.
- Lai J, An J, Nelson C, Lehman M, Batra J, Clements J. Analysis of androgen and anti-androgen regulation of KLK-related peptidase 2, 3, and 4 alternative transcripts in prostate cancer. Biol Chem. 2014 Sep;395(9):1127-32. doi: 10.1515/hsz-2014-0149.
Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), genetic variation, short tandem repeat (STR), RNAseq, ChIPseq, epidemiology, transcriptome, non-protein coding RNA (ncRNA), prostate cancer, androgen, biomarker, bioinformatics, computational biology.
