Contact

Location: Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer's & Neurodegenerative Diseases

Department

Pharmacology

Liang Ma

Assistant Professor/Research

Personal Statement:

Neurodevelopmental disorders (such as schizophrenia) and neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer’s disease) are highly heritable and complex brain disorders. At our lab, our long-term goal is to bridge neurogenetics and neurobiology by identifying risk genes across a spectrum of human brain diseases—and by uncovering how those genes contribute to disease risk.

We specialize in the discovery of causative genomic variants, genes, and alternative transcripts associated with polygenic brain disorders. To do this, we apply cutting-edge genomic and epigenomic tools, including: Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS), Whole-Genome Sequencing (WGS), RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, DNA methylation profiling. Using integrative multi-omics approaches, we have identified schizophrenia risk elements at SNX19 locus (Ma et al. 2019 Molecular Psychiatry) and CYP2D6 locus (Ma et al. 2020 Molecular Psychiatry), and Alzheimer’s disease risk elements (Chen et al. 2024 Molecular Neurodegeneration).

Another major focus of the lab involves functional validation. We perform CRISPR-based genome editing in human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are then differentiated into 2D neurons and 3D brain organoids to model disease-relevant mechanisms. This platform enables us to explore how specific genetic alterations impact cellular and molecular pathways in the brain.

Ultimately, our work aims to elucidate the regulatory mechanisms of novel risk genes for brain diseases, evaluate their molecular and cellular consequences, advance our understanding of neuropathogenesis and provide potential therapeutic targets.


Education

07/2014 - 06/2017, Postdoctoral fellow, Lieber Institute for Brain Development, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
07/2017 – 11/2017, Postdoctoral fellow, School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
12/2017 – 01/2019, Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine
02/2019 – 08/2020, Research Scientist, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine

2014 - PhD. - Genetics - University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
2010 - M.S. - Genetics - Northwest A&F University
2007 - B.S. - Animal Science - Shanxi Agricultural University

Lab Members

Lab website: https://labs.uthscsa.edu/ma/

 

Publications

First-author publications:

Ma L*, Scherbina A, Chetty S*. (2020) Variations and expression features of CYP2D6 contribute to schizophrenia risk. Molecular Psychiatry. PMID: 32047265 *Corresponding author

Ma L, Semick SA, Chen Q, Li C, Tao R, Price AJ, Shin JH, Jia Y, BrainSeq Consortium, Brandon NJ, Cross AJ, Hyde TM, Kleinman JE, Jaffe AE, Weinberger DR, Straub RE. (2019) Schizophrenia risk variants influence multiple classes of transcripts of sorting nexin 19 (SNX19). Molecular Psychiatry. PMID: 30635639

Ma L, Jia P, Zhao Z (2018) Splicing QTL of human adipose-related traits. Scientific Reports 8:318. PMID: 29321599

Ma L, Wu DD, Ma SL, Tan L, Chen X, Tang NL, Yao YG (2014) Molecular evolution in the CREB1 signal pathway and a rare haplotype in CREB1 with genetic predisposition to schizophrenia. Journal of Psychiatric Research 57:84-89. PMID: 25043418

Ma L, Tang J, Wang D, Zhang W, Liu W, Liu XH, Gong W, Yao YG, Chen X (2013) Evaluating risk loci for schizophrenia distilled from genome-wide association studies in Han Chinese from central China. Molecular Psychiatry 18: 638-639. PMID: 22584866

Ma L, Zhang W, Tang J, Tan L, Yao YG, Chen X (2013) No association between genetic polymorphisms of the NDUFS7 gene and schizophrenia in Han Chinese. Psychiatric Genetics 23: 29-32. PMID: 22935918

Ma L, Qu YJ, Huai YT, Li ZJ, Wang J, Lan XY, Zhang CL, Wang JQ, Chen H (2011) Polymorphisms identification and associations of KLF7 gene with cattle growth traits. Livestock Science 135: 1-7

Co-author publications:

Price AJ, Collado-Torres L, Ivanov NA, Xia W, Burke EE, Shin JH, Tao R, Ma L, Jia Y, Hyde TM, Kleinman JE, Weinberger DR, Jaffe AE (2018) Divergent neuronal DNA methylation patterns across human cortical development: Critical periods and a unique role of CpH methylation. Genome Biology 20:196. PMID: 31554518

Tenenbaum JD, Bhuvaneshwar K, Gagliardi JP, Hollis KF, Jia P, Ma L, Nagarajan R, Rakesh G, Subbian V, Visweswaran S, Zhao Z, Rozenblit L (2017) Translational bioinformatics in mental health: open access data sources and computational biomarker discovery. Briefings in Bioinformatics. PMID: 29186302

Su LY, Li H, Lv L, Feng YM, Li GD, Luo R, Zhou HJ, Lei XG, Ma L, Li JL, Xu L, Hu XT, Yao YG (2015) Melatonin attenuates MPTP-induced neurotoxicity via preventing CDK5-mediated autophagy and SNCA/α-synuclein aggregation. Autophagy 11:1745-1759. PMID: 26292069

Qu Y, Liu Y, Ma L, Sweeney S, Lan X, Chen Z, Li Z, Lei C, Chen H (2011) Novel SNPs of butyrophilin (BTN1A1) and milk fat globule epidermal growth factor (EGF) 8 (MFG-E8) are associated with milk traits in dairy goat. Molecular Biology Reports 38: 371-377. PMID: 20361262