Ho-Sung Rhee Wins CIHR Project Grant

Assistant Professor Ho-Sung Rhee won the recent Canadian Institute of Health Research CIHR funding competition as a principal investigator for  Dissecting distal enhancers contributing to neural gene expression programs Project Grant ($822,376).

Dr. Rhee wrote about the research that this CIHR grant will facilitate:

"In the mammalian body, thousands of different cell types have the same genomic DNA. Genetically identical cells express a distinct set of genes during embryonic development, resulting in various cell types. Cell type identity is regulated by the interplay between nuclear proteins and enhancer DNA in the cell. Mutations in enhancer DNA often cause genetic diseases. How cell identity is established by enhancer DNA and how dysfunction of enhancer DNA causes neurological diseases remain unknown. With support from CIHR, my lab will study the roles of enhancer DNA in regulating the expression of neural cell identity genes in normal development and disease. Our studies will provide critical impacts on the transition from studying cell fate specification to the more efficient production of functional cell types for disease modeling. "

In the next five years, the Rhee Lab will expand:

"This CIHR Project Grant will support my lab to recruit new graduate students and postdoctoral fellows for the next 5 years. This grant will be also used to expand on my lab research by combining genomics, genetics, and proteomics approaches, resulting in my future research publications."