Hello! Welcome to my homepage. My name is Dave Tang and I am a bioinformatics PhD candidate currently based in Yokohama, Japan. I am officially affiliated with RIKEN as part of the BrainTrain program. The aim of BrainTrain is to develop and train researchers with the skills necessary for carrying out high quality research on neurodegenerative disorders. As a way to loosely keep track of my progress, I regularly update my personal wiki site and bioinformatics blog (see links above) which may interest the keen reader :)
The BrainTrain program is separated into 5 different working packages; our team is involved with studying the genetics of the brain. While genetic associations have been made for several neurodegenerative diseases through genome wide association studies and a plethora of other genetic studies, most neurodegenrative disorders are idiopathic or seem to arise from an unknown cause. Our strategy is to analyse the transcriptome (from various sources of RNA derived from neurodegenerative patients) to help identify or gain additional clues to this "unknown cause".
A technology developed at RIKEN called Cap Analysis of Gene Expression (CAGE) allows us to capture the transcriptome in an unbiased manner. The method identifies transcription starting sites (TSSs) as well as quantifying the expression rate of the TSS. More recently, a derivative of CAGE called nano Cap Analysis Gene Expression (nanoCAGE) was developed. The advantage of nanoCAGE is that it can capture the transcriptome from as little as 10 ng of starting RNA and opens the door to new research possibilities.
Our goal is to utilise CAGE and nanoCAGE to help identify misregulated transcripts, alternative promoter usage, disrupted gene regulatory networks, etc. in the transcriptome of neurodegenerative patients and ultimately gain additional insight into the genetics of brain disorders.
