Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

Jeff Wang

M.D./Ph.D. Student

Jeff Wang is a graduate student in the South Texas Medical Scientist Training Program (MD/PhD Program) studying DNA repair under the mentorship of Patrick Sung, D.Phil. For his research, Jeff is studying the functional role of the MCM8-9 helicase complex in homologous recombination repair. In addition, he is also working on the functional characterization of a novel endonuclease, ASTE1, and its role in the CST-Shieldin protein axis of DNA repair. For his clinical specialty, Jeff is considering pursuing hematology-oncology and/or a research-focused pathology residency.

About Me

I am a California native from the Bay Area region of northern California or Norcal for short. Prior to that I had lived in New Jersey for much of my elementary and middle school years, and Beijing, where I spent the first six years of my life growing up under the care of my grandparents. For college, I relocated to sunny Los Angeles, and completed my BS/MS degree in biochemistry at UCLA, where I conducted undergraduate research in the Quinlan lab studying actin protein biochemistry. After graduating, I remained at UCLA and spent two gap years working as a research associate in the Kosuri lab focused on developing high-throughput cellular reporter assays. After my tenure in the lab, I matriculated into the MD/PhD program at UT Health San Antonio and began my physician scientist journey in June of 2019.

Hobbies/Interests

Board games, anything outdoors, and cycling

Research Topic

DNA repair in the context of genome instability and cancer progression

Why I chose MD/PhD

My passion for MD/PhD training stems from my research interests in understanding disease mechanisms and developing new biological tools for cancer diagnostics and surveillance.

Why I chose MD/PhD at UT Health San Antonio

The leadership and program environment really emphasizes collaboration and builds camaraderie among the trainees across the different cohort years. This helps foster inter-professional relationships and the successful development of early stage trainees throughout their tenure in the program.

Post-bac work or other affiliations

Research Associate 2017-2019 Kosuri lab, UCLA

Education

B.S., Biochemistry, University of California Los Angeles, 2015

M.S., Biochemistry, University of California Los Angeles, 2017

Publications

Jones, E.M., Lubock, N.B., Venkatakrishnan, A.J., Wang, J., Tseng, A.M., Paggi, J.M., Latorraca, N.R., Cancilla, D., Satyadi, M., Davis., J.E., Babu, M.M., Dror, R.O., Kosuri, S. (2020). Structural and functional characterization of G protein-coupled receptors with deep mutational scanning. eLife. PMCID: PMC7707821 https://elifesciences.org/articles/54895

Jones, E.M., Jajoo, R., Cancilla, D., Lubock, N.B., Wang, J., Satyadi, M., Cheung, R., March, C., Bloom, J.S., Matsunami, H., Kosuri, S. (2019). A Scalable Multiplexed Assay for Decoding GPCR-Ligand Interactions with RNA Sequencing. Cell Systems, 8(3), 254-260. PMCID: PMC6907015 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405471219300705?via%...

Cheung, R., Insigne, K.D., Yao, D., Burghard, C.P., Wang, J., Hsiao, Y.E, Jones, E.M, Goodman, D.B., Xiao, X., Kosuri, S. (2019). A Multiplexed Assay for Exon Recognition Reveals That an Unappreciated Fraction of Rare Genetic Variants Cause Large-Effect Splicing Disruptions. Molecular Cell, 73(1), 183-194. PMCID: PMC6599603 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1097276518308979?via%...