Angli Xue

Angli is a Postdoc Scientist in Powell Lab at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. His current research is focused on identifying the genetic control of gene expression variability at the single-cell level. To achieve this goal, he is developing novel statistical methods for single-cell eQTL mapping and applying them to the OneK1K cohort which contains gene expression profiles of 1.2 million peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from ~1,000 individuals. This work would help to understand how genetic variants contribute to gene expression regulation at the single-cell level. He is also leading the work on gene regulatory network inference and multi-omics integration for the TenK10K cohort, the extended version of OneK1K.

Angli obtained his PhD in 2021 at The University of Queensland working with Prof. Jian Yang in the field of statistical genetics. During his PhD, he utilised statistical and computational methods to dissect the genetic architecture of human complex diseases, perform meta-analyses and integrate multi-omics data to identify associated gene loci and gene regulatory mechanisms. He conducted the largest genetic study of type 2 diabetes and highlighted three T2D-associated genes with plausible regulatory mechanisms where a genetic variant exerts an effect on T2D through epigenetic regulation of gene expression. He also co-developed a software tool (GSMR2) for evaluating the causal relationship between modifiable risk factors and complex diseases. His first-authored papers have been Highly Cited Paper and highlighted by Nature Asia-Pacific. He was awarded the DeLill Nasser Award for Professional Development in Genetics (Genetics Society of America) in recognition of his PhD work. Before moving to Australia, he completed his BSc at Zhejiang University, China in 2015.