Christopher Yoon

Program: Molecular Genetics and Genomics

Current advisor: Obi L. Griffith, PhD

Undergraduate university: Massachusetts Inst. of Tech.

Research summary
Monozygotic twins are largely assumed to be identical as they are derived from a single fertilized egg. As the cells divide and replicate their DNA, somatic mutations accumulate which results in a mosaicism. During the stochastic twinning events, these somatic mutations may be distributed into the two twins disproportionately. In extreme cases, mutations may be clonal in one twin, but may be absent in the other. Using somatic mutations as cellular barcodes, I am trying to reconstruct the early cellular dynamics of monozygotic twinning.

Graduate publications
Foltz SM, Gao Q, Yoon CJ, Sun H, Yao L, Li Y, Jayasinghe RG, Cao S, King J, Kohnen DR, Fiala MA, Ding L, Vij R. 2020 Evolution and structure of clinically relevant gene fusions in multiple myeloma. Nat Commun, 11(1):2666.

Cao S, Zhou DC, Oh C, Jayasinghe RG, Zhao Y, Yoon CJ, Wyczalkowski MA, Bailey MH, Tsou T, Gao Q, Malone A, Reynolds S, Shmulevich I, Wendl MC, Chen F, Ding L. 2020 Discovery of driver non-coding splice-site-creating mutations in cancer. Nat Commun, 11(1):5573.

Mashl RJ, Scott AD, Huang KL, Wyczalkowski MA, Yoon CJ, Niu B, DeNardo E, Yellapantula VD, Handsaker RE, Chen K, Koboldt DC, Ye K, Fenyö D, Raphael BJ, Wendl MC, Ding L. 2017 GenomeVIP: a cloud platform for genomic variant discovery and interpretation. Genome Res, 27(8):1450-1459.

Huang KL, Li S, Mertins P, Cao S, Gunawardena HP, Ruggles KV, Mani DR, Clauser KR, Tanioka M, Usary J, Kavuri SM, Xie L, Yoon C, Qiao JW, Wrobel J, Wyczalkowski MA, Erdmann-Gilmore P, Snider JE, Hoog J, et al. 2017 Proteogenomic integration reveals therapeutic targets in breast cancer xenografts. Nat Commun, 8():14864.