Name Zihua Hu
Credentials  Ph.D.
Title and Department Assistant Professor, Department of Ophthalmology;
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Biostatistics;
Bioinformatics Scientist, Center for Computational Research, NYS Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences
Phone 716-881-8961
Office Address Center of Excellence, Room B1-124, 701 Ellicott Street, Buffalo, New York, 14203
Email  zihuahu@ccr.buffalo.edu

Education and Training

The University of Iowa, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
DOE Research Lab at Michigan State University, Genomics
DuPont, Computational Biology

Research Interest

I am currently pursuing a variety of computational and genomics topics and collaborating with colleagues on large-scale genomics projects, including developing statistical and computational approaches for gene expression, transcriptional regulatory network, and large-scale sequence analyses. My independent research interest is on the global gene regulation at both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. The major focus is to use computational approaches to integrate high-throughput biological data to ask questions and understand gene regulation mechanisms for diseases in a systems level. Those include (1) microRNA Regulation: I am interested in investigating the gene regulation by microRNAs, which play important roles in almost every cellular process. My research focus is to uncover the widespread influence of miRNAs on disease-related gene expression; (2) Genetic Variation & Gene Regulation: genetic variations play important roles in regulating gene expression such as miRNA and SNPs. I am interested in addressing the questions as how different miRNAs and SNPs/RNA editing/alternative splicing might contribute separately or synergistically to specific diseases such as Retinoblastoma; (3) Transcriptional Regulation of Gene Expression. Transcriptional regulation of gene expression plays a key role in many cellular processes, including proliferation, senescence and development. Transcription is a major target for regulation of gene expression in all organisms, and failure to correctly regulate transcription is a cause of many diseases, notably cancer. My research is focused on the mechanisms of transcriptional regulation of disease-related gene expression. My research also includes conducting genome-wide studies of regulatory elements to elucidate the regulatory logic of transcription factors and their corresponding binding sites in controlling gene expression.

Selected Publications 

1. Li X, Pan YZ, Seigel GM, Zihua Hu, Huang M, Yu A (2011) Contribution of miR-328, -519c and -520h to the regulation of breast cancer resistance protein BCRP/ABCG2 and their differential expression in stem-like ABCG2+ cancer cells. Biochemical Pharmacology (In press)
2. Zihua Hu*, Andrew Bruno. Functional importance of target sequences on micorRNAs inferred from genetic variations. (Revised manuscript submitted).
3. Zihua Hu*, Gulec S, Collins JF (2010) Cross-Species Comparison of Genome-Wide Gene Expression Profiles Reveals a Preferential Induction of Hypoxia Inducible Factor Responsive Genes in Iron Deprived Intestinal Epithelial Cells. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol.
4. Zihua Hu*, S Gallo (2010) Identification of interacting transcription factors controlling gene expression in human tissues. BMC Genomics;11:49.
5. Zihua Hu (2009) Insight into microRNA regulation by analyzing the characteristics of their targets in humans. BMC Genomics;10:594.
6. Ananthi J. Asirvatham, Christopher J. Gregorie, Zihua Hu, William J. Magner and Thomas B. Tomasi (2008) MicroRNA Targets in Immune Genes and the Dicer/Argonaute and ARE Machinery Components. Molecular Immunology; 45(7):1995-2006.
7. Zihua Hu*, Boyu Hu, and Jamie F. Collins (2007) Prediction of Synergistic Transcription Factors by Function Conservation. Genome Biology, 8:R257.
8. Zihua Hu*, Jamie F. Collins (2007) Promoter Analysis of Rat Duodenal Genes Induced During Iron-Deficiency Reveals Enrichment of Conserved SP1 Binding Sites. BMC Genomics, 8:420
9. Zihua Hu*, GR Wilsky (2006) Utilization of Two Sample t-test Statistics from Redundant Probe Sets to Evaluate Different Probe Set Algorithms in GeneChip Studies. BMC Bioinformatics, 7:12.
10. Shen F, Zihua Hu, J Goswami and SL Gaffen (2006) Identification of Common Transcriptional Regulatory Elements in Interleukin-17 Target Genes. J Biol Chem. 281:24138-24148.
     

Teaching :

Introduction of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology