Bo Xia

My interest in science and research started by studying chemistry. In high school, I studied college chemistry and was fascinated by how those simple carbon-carbon bonds build bio-molecules and even the complicated life. Then I went to China Agricultural University and joined its Life Science Honors Program for my undergraduate studies. Serendipitously, my deep interest in chemistry and biology led me to Dr. Chengqi Yi in a summer school at Peking University. It was my dream at that time to work at the interfaces of chemistry and biology, or chemical biology. Thus I joined the Yi lab for my independent undergraduate thesis research, which later turned out to be flourishing. Inspired by my previous knowledge of organic chemistry, we developed a selective chemical labeling method for 5-formylcytosine (5fC), a new DNA epigenetic modification. Excitingly, such chemical labeling induces C-to-T transition at the 5fC sites when amplifying the labeled DNA. Such a beautiful chemistry allowed us to develop some easy and robust epigenome sequencing methods, including fC-CET (for genome-wide mapping of 5fC with single-base resolution, Xia, et al, 2015), CLEVER-seq (for 5fC mapping in single-cell genomes, Zhu, et al, 2017) and hmC-CATCH (for 5hmC mapping, Zeng, et al, 2018).

While I enjoyed studying chemical biology and epigenetics in Dr. Chengqi Yi's lab, I also want to explore more in the science world. I joined NYU School of Medicine to pursue my Ph.D. degree. At NYU, I’m fortunate to be co-mentored by Dr. Itai Yanai and Dr. Jef D. Boeke, allowing me to think broadly about the genome - architecture, regulation, and evolution. My research integrates both 'wet-lab' (single-cell and spatial-resolved transcriptomics, etc) and 'dry-lab' (computational tools) techniques to study genome evolution in developmental systems and diseases. We proposed the 'transcriptional scanning' hypothesis that widespread transcription during spermatogenesis may function as a systematic mechanism to correct germline DNA damages and thus modulated gene evolution rates. Recently, I discovered a transposable element insertion as the key genetic mechanism underlying the tail-loss phenotype in humans and apes. I'm joining Harvard University as a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows in the summer of 2022. Ultimately, I aim to understand genome regulation across development, disease, and evolution.

Besides working in the laboratory, I explore the streets and parks in NYC and Boston, visit or volunteer in museums and, of course, try different restaurants with food from all over the world. You can frequently find me in Boston on weekends, starting a new journey of exploration. By the way, I love lobster in Boston!