Taeyoung Hwang, PhD

About

Taeyoung Hwang, Ph.D., is an Investigator at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology and the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Hwang received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a master’s degree in Bioinformatics at Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea, and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University. After completing postdoctoral training at the University of Colorado, Boulder (advisor: John Rinn), Dr. Hwang joined the Lieber Institute for Brain Development in 2021. Dr. Hwang’s primary interest is the regulatory roles of RNA, and the Hwang laboratory develops and applies computational methods and high-throughput assays of RNA biology to uncover RNA-mediated gene regulation in the nervous system.

Selected Publications

Full listing available at Google Scholar

Hwang T, Park CK, Leung AKL, Gao Y, Hyde TM, Kleinman JE, Rajpurohit A, Tao R, †Shin JH and †Weinberger DR. Dynamic regulation of RNA editing in human brain development and disease. Nature Neuroscience (2016), 19, 1093-1099. †co-corresponding.

*Hwang T, *Mathios D, McDonald KL, Daris I, Park SH, Burger PC, Kim S, Dho YS, Carolyn H, Bettegowda C, Shin JH, †Lim M and †Park CK. Integrative analysis of DNA methylation suggests down-regulation of oncogenic pathways and reduced somatic mutation rates in survival outliers of glioblastoma. Acta Neuropathol Commun (2019), 7:88. * equal contribution, †co-corresponding.

*Long Y, *Hwang T, Gooding AR, Goodrich KJ, †Rinn JL and †Cech TR. RNA is essential for PRC2 chromatin occupancy and function in human pluripotent stem cells. Nature Genetics (2020), 52: 931-938. *equal contribution, †co-corresponding.

*Lewandowski JP, *Dumbović G, *Watson AR, *Hwang T, Palmer EJ, Chang N, Much C, Turner KM, Kirby C, Rubinstein ND, Groff AF, Liapis SC, Gerhardinger C, Bester A, Pandolfi PP, Clohessy JG, †Hoekstra HE, †Sauvageau M and †Rinn JL. The Tug1 lncRNA Locus is Essential for Male Fertility. Genome Biology (2020), 21:237. *equal contribution, †co- corresponding.

Holmes ZE, Hamilton DJ, Hwang T, Parsonnet NV, Rinn JL, †Wuttke DS and †Batey RT. The Sox2 transcription factor binds double-stranded RNA. Nature Communications (2020), 11: 1805. †co-corresponding.

Research

RNA is typically understood as an intermediary molecule between DNA and protein. But, some noncoding RNAs, as well as the noncoding regions of messenger RNA, have been well appreciated as important regulators of gene expression and cellular functions. As increasing numbers of noncoding RNAs are implicated in development and diseases, the forefront of current RNA research centers on understanding its regulatory roles beyond coding potential.

The Hwang laboratory investigates the roles of regulatory RNAs in the nervous system and aims to understand the RNA-based mechanisms in neural development and brain disorders. We develop computational methods and genomic assays to map regulatory RNAs in the human genome and apply high-throughput tools to evaluate the effects of risk variations on RNA-mediated regulatory mechanisms. Current research projects include characterizing small RNA expression in human brain development, identifying RNA elements driving RNA’s subcellular localization in neurons, and evaluating psychiatric risk variations on RNA-protein interaction dysregulation.

Team

Yu Hsuan Lee, M.S., Research Associate

Yuzhou Huang, Graduate Student (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, JHU)

Zaiwei Liu, Graduate Student (Biomedical Engineering, JHU)

Jeffrey Zhou, Undergraduate Intern (Neuroscience, JHU)