KC Huang

About

KC Huang is a LeRa Professor and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University. His laboratory employs diverse interdisciplinary methods of inquiry to understand the relationships among cell shape detection, determination, and maintenance in bacteria. Cell shape plays a critical role in regulating many physiological functions, yet little is known about how the wide variety of cell shapes are determined and maintained. Inside the cell, many proteins organize and segregate, but how they detect and respond to the cellular morphology to end up at the right place at the right time is also largely mysterious. The group uses a combination of analytical, computational, and experimental approaches to probe physical mechanisms of shape-related self-organization in protein networks, membranes, and the cell wall. Current topics of interest include cell-wall biosynthesis, the regulation and mechanics of cell division, membrane organization, and membrane-mediated protein interactions. Ultimately, the manipulation of cell shape may provide a direct tool for engineering complex cellular behaviors.

Research topics

• Biology
• Genetics
• Computational biology
• Computer Science
• Microbiology
• Ecology
• Cell biology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Data Mining
• Immunology

Selected publications

• A single-cell transcriptomic atlas characterizes ageing tissues in the mouse

  Nature · 2020 · 1293 citations

  DOI

• The Tabula Sapiens: A multiple-organ, single-cell transcriptomic atlas of humans

  Science · 2022 · 979 citations

  Molecular characterization of cell types using single-cell transcriptome sequencing is revolutionizing cell biology and enabling new insights into the physiology of human organs. We created a human reference atlas comprising nearly 500,000 cells from 24 different tissues and organs, many from the same donor. This atlas enabled molecular characterization of more than 400 cell types, their distribution across tissues, and tissue-specific variation in gene expression. Using multiple tissues from a…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Ageing hallmarks exhibit organ-specific temporal signatures

  Nature · 2020 · 679 citations

  DOI

• Design, construction, and in vivo augmentation of a complex gut microbiome

  Cell · 2022 · 260 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cell types of origin of the cell-free transcriptome

  Nature Biotechnology · 2022 · 99 citations

  Cell-free RNA from liquid biopsies can be analyzed to determine disease tissue of origin. We extend this concept to identify cell types of origin using the Tabula Sapiens transcriptomic cell atlas as well as individual tissue transcriptomic cell atlases in combination with the Human Protein Atlas RNA consensus dataset. We define cell type signature scores, which allow the inference of cell types that contribute to cell-free RNA for a variety of diseases.

  DOI

Recent grants

• A universal pipeline for functional characterization of the human microbiota at a massive scale

  NIH · $7.6M · 2020–2026

• NIH Grant DP2OD006466

  NIH · $2.4M · 2014

• MIM: Systematic Dissection of Complex Synthetic Gut Bacterial Communities

  NSF · $2.5M · 2021–2026

Frequent coauthors

• Justin L. Sonnenburg

  Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (United States)

  78 shared

• Handuo Shi

  Stanford University

  77 shared

• Norma Neff

  Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (United States)

  55 shared

• Stephen R. Quake

  Stanford University

  50 shared

• Andrés Aranda-Díaz

  University of California, San Francisco

  49 shared

• Katharine M. Ng

  University of British Columbia

  48 shared

• Adam M. Deutschbauer

  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  47 shared

• Carolina Tropini

  University of British Columbia

  44 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Microbiology and Immunology

  Stanford University

  1996

• B.S., Microbiology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1991

Similar researchers at Stanford University

• Karl Deisserothh-218
• Michael Fischbachh-115
• Paul Yockh-79