Hyejung Won
@hyejung_won
Associate Professor, Genetics/Neuroscience UNC Chapel Hill http://hyejungwon.bsky.social
1/ I am beyond thrilled to share our new paper in @CellCellPress! We explored the regulatory principles underlying pleiotropy in psychiatric disorders. cell.com/cell/abstract/…
New preprint from our lab led by an amazing team, @ckvuong and Alexis Weber, were we employ single-cell multi-omics in the developing brain to uncover mechanisms of Down syndrome. #brain #singlecell #multiomics #DownSyndrome biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
In @NatureGenet we report that base editing of trinucleotide repeats (TNRs) reduces somatic repeat expansions in Huntington’s disease (HD) and Friedreich’s ataxia (FRDA)—in patient-derived cells and in vivo—a collaboration with the Mouro Pinto lab. drive.google.com/file/d/1on7kdy… 1/14
Our paper on splicing isoforms in developing human brain is finally out in @ScienceMagazine! So grateful to @LTULab and @mikejg84 for letting me be part of this amazing work. Congrats @ashokpatowary Pan Zhang @connorjops! science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
Today in @CellCellPress we report the use of prime editing to correct several mutations that cause alternating hemiplegia of childhood (AHC), a rare and devastating neurodevelopmental disorder, in patient-derived cells and in two mouse models. drive.google.com/file/d/1ibC50t… 1/10
Congrats to @McKnightFdn 2025 Neurobiology Brain Disorder awardees: @hyejung_won @SharmaLab_UCSC @Allan_HPool @ZucheroLab @EthanHughesLab. Honored to be on the selection committee. So many amazing applicants this year focused on brain disorders.
We are all somatic mutation mosaics. "There are trillions of cells in a human body and so the total number of somatic mutations acquired in a single individual may well exceed quadrillions, millions of times the size of the human genome." @Nature nature.com/articles/s4158…
Hello RNA World! Ever wonder what's "talking to" your favorite transcript, but were too scared to ask? In our review in @CellReports, @FKHM and I highlight new RNA-focused tools for discovering RNA interactions across organizational scales. Checkit! tinyurl.com/ydn6e3ac
🚨 New #preprint alert! We're excited to share the latest work from the brilliant Sora Yoon: "Inference of multi-enhancer interactions in T lymphocytes using Hi-Cociety" biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
DeepMind just dropped a 106-page paper unveiling AlphaGenome. This single model could completely redefine how we discover disease-causing mutations and drug targets. This is massive. 🧵
Today @arcinstitute releases State, our first perturbation prediction AI model and an important step towards our goal of a virtual cell State is designed to learn how to shift cells between states (e.g. “diseased” to “healthy”) using drugs, cytokines, or genetic perturbations
Excited about our new preprint: 1st successful genome-wide study of >61,000 panic attack & 29,000 panic disorder cases. medrxiv.org/content/10.1... We find 17 variants & evidence that peripheral neurons in eye, lungs & heart are involved in panic & other psychiatric disorders 1/n
Congratulations to our Human Neural Circuitry team; bit.ly/4dEyX7Z publishes today in Science! This was the hardest challenge of my career, but one of the most rewarding, after years of rebuilding– & for myself, expanding my inpatient neuropsychiatry work to the service…
Postdoc positions available in my lab @karolinskainst - exciting science and fantastic environment. I take mentoring seriously - 7/7 postdocs that left my lab has faculty positions today. Existing datasets and funds to build new ones available. shorturl.at/sj2YE
In the battle against brain disease, researchers can now rely on a new arsenal of genetic tools – The Armamentarium. Together with scientists from across the @NIH BRAIN Initiative, we’ve created and published over 1000 new enhancer AAV vectors.
Today "a milestone in the evolution of personalized therapies for rare & ultra-rare inborn errors of metabolism" —the 1st human to undergo custom genome editing —outgrowth of decades of NIH funded research nejm.org/doi/full/10.10… nejm.org/doi/full/10.10… @NEJM…
Excited to to see our collaboration with @GMBurslem lab published today! This is part of our ongoing long term goal of achieving scalable non-disruptive and direct imaging and perturbation of the endogenous proteome science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
Thrilled to announce our latest work in @CellCellPress! We've developed a new human neuron model that effectively mimics tau aggregate spread in tauopathy. Details here: cell.com/cell/fulltext/… (1/5)
New long post by me: The decline in cancer mortality is about much more than smoking. Many factors — including improvements in diagnosis, medical and surgical innovation, vaccination against cancers — have had a very real impact. scientificdiscovery.dev/p/the-decline-…
I tried to summarize psychiatric genetics in a figure 🧬🧠
Why are older individuals more prone to neurodegenerative diseases? Very excited to share our new #bioRxiv from @JoeEcker. We study age-related epigenetic changes in the brain, highlighting on cell-type-specific transposon demethylation and TAD remodeling. We also present a deep…