(August) Yue Huang

My long-term research goal is to understand how somatic mutations shape human development, aging, and disease through computational genomics. Somatic mutations arise postzygotically after fertilization and accumulate throughout life, serving not only as natural records of cellular history but also as drivers of disease. Deciphering these mutations therefore provides a unique opportunity to reconstruct human development, understand tissue homeostasis, and uncover the molecular mechanisms underlying aging and disease. However, identifying somatic mutations in non-cancer tissues remains technically challenging because of their low allele frequencies and the difficulty of distinguishing true variants from germline polymorphisms and sequencing artifacts.