Karen Wing Yee YUEN

  • Fellowship in 2008 at University of California, San Diego

Dr. Karen W. Y. Yuen completed her PhD in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, Canada, studying chromosome instability in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and human cancers. She then received a Croucher Fellowship to pursue her post-doctoral training at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the University of California, San Diego, USA, studying centromere and kinetochore formation and propagation in Caenorhabditis elegans. Dr. Yuen is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. Dr. Yuen has received the Hong Kong Research Grants Council Early Career Award. 

Currently

Dr. Yuen’s research is focused on cellular mechanisms involved in chromosome segregation, including centromere and kinetochore function, sister chromatid cohesion, and epigenetic regulation. She is interested in the mechanism of de novo centromere establishment on chromosomes in cancers, after chromosome rearrangements, during evolution and on artificial chromosomes. She is also involved in the development of accurately segregating artificial chromosomes for applications as cloning vectors and gene therapies.


Selected Publications:

  1. Lee B.C.H., Lin Z and Yuen K.W.Y.^. RbAp46/48LIN-53 is Required for Holocentromere Assembly in Caenorhabditis elegans. Cell Reports. 2016. 14:1819-1828. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2016.01.065. Abstract. Facebook.
  2. Gassmann R*, Rechtsteiner A*, Yuen K*, Muroyama A, Monen J, Barron F, Maddox P, Monen J, Egelhofer T, Ercan S, Oegema K, Lieb J, Strome S, and Desai A. An Inverse Relationship to Germline Transcription Defines the C. elegans Holocentromere in Progeny. Nature. 2012. 484(7395):534-7. doi:10.1038/nature10973. Abstract. F1000 Recommendation
  3. Yuen K, Nabesima K, Oegema K, and Desai A. Rapid De Novo Centromere Formation Occurs Independently of Heterochromatin Protein 1 in C. elegans Embryos. Current Biology. 2011. 21(21):1800-7. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.09.016. Abstract.