The question
Many diseases begin in one tissue but ultimately disrupt physiology across the body. We are building a new framework for disease biology that treats the organism as an integrated system. By combining whole-organism analysis with evolutionary conservation, we seek to identify fundamental mechanisms that persist across species, drive systemic disease, and reveal new opportunities for therapeutic intervention.
How we answer it
Disease does not respect organ boundaries. We map molecular, metabolic, and cellular changes across the whole organism to uncover how local pathology propagates through distant tissues, rewires organ-to-organ communication, and drives systemic dysfunction.
Learn MoreDisease produces thousands of biological changes, but only a fraction are fundamental drivers. We use evolutionary conservation as a powerful filter to identify mechanisms that persist across species, then test experimentally whether they drive disease.
Learn MoreWe combine the complementary strengths of Drosophila, mouse models, and clinical data to move from discovery to causal mechanism, test conservation across species, and connect fundamental biology to human disease and therapeutic opportunity.
Learn MoreProof of concept
A tumor begins locally, yet its effects can spread throughout the entire body. Cancer cachexia provides a powerful model for understanding how local pathology becomes systemic disease.
By mapping these organism-wide changes, we traced how tumor-derived signals reprogram host metabolism and drive systemic dysfunction. This work identified hepatic gluconeogenesis as a conserved driver of cancer cachexia and highlighted PDK3 as a promising therapeutic target.
Read the study
Where this leads
Cancer cachexia is our starting point, not our endpoint.
We are building a broader framework to understand how disease in one tissue disrupts the networks that sustain the whole organism. By combining whole-organism mapping with causal experiments across species, we aim to distinguish changes that accompany disease from mechanisms that actually drive it. Our goal is to uncover shared principles of systemic dysfunction and identify conserved mechanisms that can reveal new opportunities for intervention in human disease.
Join us
The Liu Lab sits at the intersection of fundamental discovery and clinical translation within the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory–Northwell Health research ecosystem. This environment brings together cutting-edge basic science, advanced technologies, and direct connections to human disease and clinical research.
We are building a multidisciplinary program spanning genetics, systemic metabolism, evolutionary biology, computational science, and human disease. We welcome ambitious scientists and collaborators who want to tackle bold questions across biological scales—from molecules and cells to organs, organisms, and human health.
