Junyue Cao, PhD, is the inaugural Fisher Center Foundation Associate Professor and the Director of the Laboratory of Single-Cell Genomics and Population Dynamics at The Rockefeller University. His main research areas are neurogenerative diseases, genetics and genomics, and stem cell regeneration and aging.
Dr. Cao and his team explore individual cells as the fundamental unit of form and function in biological systems. A delicately balanced program of cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis ensures that tissues and organs can maintain a stable size and function, and disruptions in this homeostasis can lead to disorders including neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. Dr. Cao’s lab is investigating how a cell population in a mammalian body maintains homeostasis and how it is disrupted in aging and aging-related disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.
The lab’s main focus is the development of exponentially scalable technologies to profile cellular dynamics and associated genomic features at a single-cell resolution. One of these technologies, EasySci, enables routine scanning of gene expression and chromatin accessibility profiles from millions of single cells. Applying this to human and mouse brains, Dr. Cao’s team has gained insights into gene regulation and cell population dynamics in aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Another technology they have developed, TrackerSci, profiles gene expression and epigenome changes affecting progenitor cell proliferation and differentiation dynamics in vivo. This technique quantifies aging and Alzheimer’s disease-associated shifts in cell-type-specific dynamics, deciphering associated molecular programs.
Although current single-cell genomic techniques offer comprehensive profiling of cell states, strategies for manipulating cell states and population dynamics in vivo are still lacking. Another goal of Dr. Cao’s lab is to develop methods for cell type-specific manipulation to investigate the rules governing cellular functions and cell population homeostasis in vivo. One of these tools, PerturbSci-Kinetics, captures single-cell transcriptional dynamics in response to pooled CRISPR screens targeting various biological processes. This high-throughput technique characterizes elements that govern cell-type-specific gene regulation during RNA synthesis, processing, and degradation, enabling systematic decoding of the genome-wide regulatory network that underlies cell-type-specific molecular homeostasis at scale.
Dr. Cao’s team is also working on the identification of cell-type-specific regulatory modules, such as combinations of enhancers and promoters that direct gene expression in a cell-type-specific manner. With the help of this knowledge, they aim to develop tools that enhance cell population robustness or restore cell population homeostasis in aging and Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Cao received his BS in Biological Science from Peking University in 2010 and his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Washington in 2019. Articles he has co-authored have recently appeared in Nature, Science, Cell, and other publications, and he is the recipient of numerous awards including the Verna Chapman Young Scientist Award (2018), the Western Association of Graduate Schools and University Microfilms International Outstanding Innovation in Technology Award (2020), the Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists (2020), the Irma T. Hirschl/Monique Weill-Caulier Trust Research Award (2021), the Sagol Network GerOmic Award for Junior Faculty (2021), the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2021), the Melanoma Research Alliance Young Investigator Award (2022), the William Ackman and Neri Oxman Innovation Fund Award (2022), and the Hevolution/AFAR New Investigator Award (2025).
