College of Medicine
Zhou Lab
Led by Lei Zhou · Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
What we study
The Zhou Lab studies innate immunity in fruit flies, focusing on how cells die (apoptosis) to fight arbovirus infections. They use genetic research and bioinformatics to explore immune responses in aging and cancer.
What working here is like
- Wet lab
- Computational
- Fruit flies
- Other insects
- Coding helps
- Projects
- 3
- Papers
- 5
Current projects
Understanding the Functional mechanism of hAAT in Drosophila
Investigating how a protein called hAAT functions in fruit flies.
Shared and sex-specific inflammaging patterns in the Drosophila brain
The lab studies how aging causes inflammation in fruit fly brains. They look at many fly strains, find markers of whole‑body inflammation, and use single‑cell RNA data to see which brain cells age differently in males and females. Students will help analyze the data and identify cell‑type specific patterns.
From the Spring 2025 UF Undergraduate Research Symposium · abstract book, p. 543
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Temperature-Controlled Tumorigenesis in Drosophila melanogaster
The lab uses fruit flies to study how immune cells called macrophages can switch from fighting tumors to helping them spread. Students will work with flies that have a specific gene deletion and an oncogene, and will use a temperature‑sensitive system to control when tumors start. Future work will test if this system causes metastasis and will track macrophage behavior at different tumor stages.
From the Spring 2025 UF Undergraduate Research Symposium · abstract book, p. 350
Summaries are written by AI in plain language from public symposium abstracts and may be imperfect.
Recent papers, explained
- Prevention of Acute Enteritis by ZnO Nanoparticles Green-Synthesized using Leonurus japonicus Leaf Extract
2026 · Journal of Pharmaceutical Innovation
- PCMamba: Integrating partial convolution and state space models for lung cancer histopathological image classification
2026 · Translational Oncology
Creates a new model combining convolution and state space methods for lung cancer images.
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- Cystoisospora belli infection in an immunocompetent patient
2026 · Parasitology Research
Describes a rare case of a parasite infection in a healthy person.
- Multimodal Fusion of Intraoperative FLIm and Preoperative PET/CT for Patient-Level Prediction of Lymph Node Metastasis in Head and Neck Cancer
2026 · Cancers
Uses imaging and other data to predict lymph node spread in head and neck cancer.
- Molecular subtyping of colorectal cancer based on aging-related gene network perturbation analysis and functional validation of MAP1B
2026 · Translational Oncology
Finds three types of colorectal cancer by studying aging-related genes and their effects.
Plain-language summaries are AI-written and reviewed by us; check the paper for details.
How to reach out
Lei Zhou hasn't set up this page yet. Their UF Scholars profile lists their publications.