Faculty Directory
Zhe Ji

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Assistant Professor of Pharmacology

Contact

2145 Sheridan Road
Tech
Evanston, IL 60208-3109

Email Zhe Ji

Website

Zhe Ji Research Group

Departments

Biomedical Engineering

Education

Postdoc Cancer Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA

Postdoc Computational Biology, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA

Ph.D. Computational Genomics, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ

B.S. Biotechnology, Nanjing University, China

 


Research Interests

Our group develops integrated computational and experimental genomics approaches to examine the regulation of gene transcription and RNA translation underlying cell fate commitment and oncogenic processes. We aim to reveal novel disease therapeutic strategies for precision medicine and immunotherapy.

Keywords of our research: Data Science, Computational Biology, Functional Genomics, RNA, Cancer, Inflammation, and Machine Learning.


Selected Publications

Yang, H., Li, Q., Stroup, E.K., Wang, S., and Ji, Z. (2024). Widespread stable noncanonical peptides identified by integrated analyses of ribosome profiling and ORF features. Nature Communications, 15, 1932. 

Stroup, E.K., and Ji, Z. (2023). Deep learning of human polyadenylation sites at nucleotide resolution reveals molecular determinants of site usage and relevance in disease. Nature Communications, 14, 7378. 

Li, Q., Yang, H., Stroup, E.K., Wang, H., and Ji, Z. (2022). Low-input RNase footprinting for simultaneous quantification of cytosolic and mitochondrial translation. Genome Research, 32: 545-557. 

Wang, X., Frederick, J., Wang, H., Hui, S., Backman, V., and Ji, Z. (2021). Spike-in normalization for single-cell RNA-seq reveals dynamic global transcriptional activity mediating anti-cancer drug response. NAR Genomics and Bioinformatics, 3(2): lqab054.

Ji, Z., He, L., Regev, A. and Struhl, K. (2019). Inflammatory regulatory network mediated by the joint action of NF-kB, STAT3, and AP-1 factors is involved in many human cancers. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 116, 9453-9462.

Ji, Z., He, L., Rotem, A., Janzer, A., Cheng, C.S., Regev, A. and Struhl, K. (2018). Genome-scale identification of transcription factors that mediate an inflammatory network during breast cellular transformation. Nature Communications, 9, 2068.

Miotto, B.*, Ji, Z.* and Struhl, K. (2016). Selectivity of ORC binding sites and the relation to replication timing, fragile sites, and deletions in cancers. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 113, E4810-E4819.

Ji, Z., Song, R., Huang, H., Regev, A. and Struhl, K. (2016). Transcriptome-scale RNase-footprinting of RNA-protein complexes. Nature Biotechnology, 34 (4), 410-413.

Ji, Z.*, Song, R.*, Regev, A. and Struhl, K. (2015). Many lncRNAs, 5’UTRs, and pseudogenes are translated and some are likely to express functional proteins. eLife, 4: e08890.

Luo, W.*, Ji, Z.*, Pan, Z.*, You B., Hoque, M., Li, W., Gunderson, S., and Tian, B. (2013). The conserved intronic cleavage and polyadenylation site of CstF-77 gene imparts control of 3’ end processing by feedback autoregulation and U1 snRNP. PLoS Genetics 9, e1003613.

Hoque, M.*, Ji, Z.*, Zheng, D., Luo, W., Li, W., You, B., Park, J.Y., Yehia, G., and Tian, B. (2013). Analysis of alternative cleavage and polyadenylation by 3’ region extraction and deep sequencing. Nature Methods 10, 133-139.

Haenni, S.*, Ji, Z.*, Hoque, M., Rust, N., Sharpe, H., Eberhard, R., Browne, C., Hengartner, M.O., Mellor, J., McGhee, J., Tian, B. and Furger, A. (2012). Analysis of C. elegans intestinal nuclear gene expression using fluorescence-activated nuclei sorting and 3’ end-seq. Nucleic Acids Research 40, 6304-6318.

Ji, Z.*, Luo, W.*, Li, W., Hoque, M., Pan, Z., Zhao, Y., and Tian, B. (2011). Transcriptional activity regulates alternative cleavage and polyadenylation. Molecular Systems Biology 7, 534.

Ji, Z., and Tian, B. (2009). Reprogramming of 3’ untranslated regions of mRNAs by alternative polyadenylation in generation of pluripotent stem cells from different cell types. PLoS One 4, e8419.

Ji, Z.*, Lee, J.Y.*, Pan, Z.*, Jiang, B. and Tian, B. (2009). Progressive lengthening of 3’ untranslated regions of mRNAs by alternative polyadenylation during mouse embryonic development. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106, 7028-7033.

Patents

Tian, B., Luo, W., Ji, Z., and Hoque, M., Methods of isolating RNA and mapping of polyadenylation isoforms, WO Patent 2,013,028,902, 2013