Dr. Lan Lan

Nucleolar organizer regions (NORs) are specialized chromosomal regions composed of long arrays of 45S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) repeats that give rise to the nucleolus. They encode ribosomal RNA (rRNA), which is indispensable for ribosome biogenesis and protein synthesis.

Because NORs consist of megabase-scale, highly homogeneous tandem repeats, they remain one of the most difficult regions of the genome to assemble accurately. Consequently, their complete genomic structure and natural variation are still poorly resolved.

My project aims to develop computational approaches for producing high-quality NOR assemblies and to uncover the structural diversity, sequence variation, and evolutionary patterns of NORs.