The Department of Biological Sciences focuses on cutting-edge research and the major needs of state strategies. We have established a world-leading multi-disciplinary research platform with a collection of outstanding faculty members who have undertook major research projects of core national research plans such as the“973”,“863”and National Natural Science Foundation grants.
1. To collect and employ human genetic resources with a focus on major diseases including cardiovascular and cranial vascular diseases, as well as neurological and ophthalmic diseases. To identify disease-causing genes, genes conferring disease susceptibility, and genetic variants associated with the diseases. To establish disease models and investigate the pathological mechanisms.
2. To characterize the structure, function and regulatory mechanism of critical proteins and signaling pathways.
3. To investigate the genetic basis of crop traits and improvements.
Our department is in charge of over 20 courses of biology major. Our faculty members have received multiple university grants and published articles on teaching reform. We have also received numerous university teaching awards.
Our department has established close collaboration with more than 10 top hospitals in the country and constructed one of the largest cardiovascular disease gene library, GeneID, which contains over 80,000 samples. In recent years, our faculty members have identified more than ten novel genes associated with major diseases and have characterized the structure, function and regulatory mechanisms of critical proteins and signaling pathways. These resulted in over 60 publications in high-impact journals including Nature, Science and Cell. In addition, we have been actively promoting translational research and developing gene detection technologies. Between 2014 and 2016, we undertook a major research project (The Molecular Epidemiology of Screening Newborns for Deafness Gene for Free) supported by“Benefit the People”Plan of Wuhan. We found 4,271 positive carriers and successfully applied the findings of basic research to disease diagnosis and treatment.
