Xiaoyu Liang, PhD

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Xiaoyu Liang’s research aims to better understand how genetic variation contributes to the etiology of complex diseases and how genetic and environmental risks on substance abuse and other psychiatric disorders and translate genetic findings to clinical use. Her primary research goal is to develop statistical methods and computational tools for identifying and characterizing genetic or epigenetic variants that influence susceptibility to complex traits. Dr. Liang has a background in statistical genetics and epigenetics regulation in psychiatric disorders, with specific training and expertise in developing statistical methods and computational tools to map complex disease genes, drug and alcohol addiction and its relationship with HIV infection, joint analysis of multiple phenotypes in genome, epigenome, phenome-wide association studies, and single‐cell RNA sequencing analysis.

 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Liang, X., Sinha, R., Justice, A. C., Cohen, M. H., Aouizerat, B. E., & Xu, K. (2022). A new monocyte epigenetic clock reveals effects of alcohol consumption on biological aging in three independent cohorts (N=2,242). Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Liang, X., Justice, A. C., So-Armah, K., Krystal, J. H., Sinha, R., & Xu, K. (2021). DNA methylation signature on phosphatidylethanol, not on self-reported alcohol consumption, predicts hazardous alcohol consumption in two distinct populations. Molecular psychiatry, 1-16.

Liang, X., Hu, Y., Yan, C., & Xu, K. (2020). i2d: an R package for simulating data from images and the implications in biomedical research. Bioinformatics.

Liang, X., Wang, Z., Sha, Q., & Zhang, S. (2016). An adaptive Fisher’s combination method for joint analysis of multiple phenotypes in association studies. Scientific reports, 6(1), 1-10.