Yungfeng Liu

My name is Yunfeng Liu, I was born and raised in Tianmen City, China. My current research focuses mainly on age-related epigenetic changes. In my spare time I like to watch anime, listen to music and spend time with friends.

I studied physiology at South China University of Technology, where I obtained my Master’s degree. In the postdoctoral phase, I mainly did research on bioinformatics analysis and experiments with prostate cancer. On the one hand, I revealed some new functional long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and identified prognosis-related RNAs in prostate cancer. On the other hand, a comprehensive diagnostic scoring model was constructed based on a six-gene panel. The model showed strong robust performance with regard to prediction of the prognosis and diagnosis of PCa, and its application potential was further validated across the whole TCGA and ICGC cohorts.
In 2020, I was lucky enough to receive the China Scholarship Council (CSC)-Leiden University scholarship. This grant gave me the opportunity to continue my PhD research in the group of Prof. Bas Heijmans. My PhD project will focus on the functional genomics analysis of DNA methylation changes in aging. At the moment I mainly focus on age-related epigenetic changes on sex chromosomes in men and women. In particular, I hope to catalog age-related differential methylation for sex chromosomes and explore its functional consequences in the context of health and disease.