Merrin Leong, PhD

Merrin Leong did his doctoral research at Hong Kong University in the laboratory of Maria Lung, where he studied Epstein-Barr virus infection roles in regulation of host histone modifications.  Merring identified that EBV infections induces histone bivalent switches in squameous epithelial cells, and found roles for these epigenetic modifiations in suppression of DNA damage repair genes in a methylation-independent manner.