The School of Biological Sciences Fall 2025 Seminar Series presents Dr. Soojin Yi

Abstract: A main focus of my lab is to use cellular-resolution genomic and epigenomic approaches to study human evolution. Our recent work traced molecular trajectories of human brain evolution, which underlie the emergence of uniquely human cognitive and behavioral traits. By integrating single-cell transcriptomic and epigenomic data across six major brain cell types, we revealed that regulatory evolution in the human brain was dominated by increases—rather than decreases—in gene expression. Interestingly, these shifts were highly cell-type specific and rarely shared across cell types, indicating that human brain regulatory evolution was highly specific to different cell-types. Our current study of matched gene expression and chromatin accessibility profiles of previously understudied brain regions reveals regulatory alterations of glial cells in the human brain. In addition, long-read sequencing technology now enables us to investigate previously inaccessible genomic regions in a cell-type-specific manner. Together, we aim to understand detailed genomic and regulatory alterations in human evolution.