He ditched marine biology and is now a leading expert on Asian genetics

SINGAPORE – At 61, Professor Liu Jianjun is a leading human geneticist who has advanced the understanding of diseases prevalent in Asians, as well as the treatment outcomes. 

But Prof Liu, former acting executive director and distinguished principal scientist of the Laboratory of Human Genomics at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), did not start out studying genetics.

His academic roots are in marine biology.

“I was in China then, and the only way for me to go overseas was through science.

“I was not rich, so the only way to go to the United States to study was to get a scholarship. My master’s degree was in marine biology, and I was doing environmental science.

“For me to go overseas, I would have to continue in this field,” he said.

But after having spent a year on his doctorate at the coastal campus of Duke University in North Carolina in 1991, Prof Liu felt that the field then was largely about environmental protections and species conservation, and it was no longer of interest to him.

It was the siren call of something else that he found irresistible.

“I wanted a change. I wanted to learn about numbers and mathematics, equations and calculations.

“That was when I abandoned my original fellowship and started searching for a new lab, new supervisors, new faculties,” said Prof Liu.

That desire led him to genetics.

“At the time, genetics was already starting up, particularly human genetics and the discovery of many novel susceptibility genes for complex human diseases.

“I found my professor at the university. She was a geneticist working on the Drosophila (fruit fly).

“I convinced her to take me in, and I worked on the classical genetic Drosophila for five years, finishing my PhD course (in 1997),” he said.

It was a remark by his mother on why he was looking at fruit flies that drove him to seek “something more meaningful”.

“I went to Columbia University (in New York) and worked on genetic psychiatry disorders, particularly schizophrenia.

“I picked Columbia because I wanted to work on human genes, on diseases, and make a more direct impact.

“I joined the genome centre there and worked with Conrad Gilliam, who worked on genetic psychiatry,” he said.

Professor Gilliam was with the departments of psychiatry, and genetics and development at Columbia.

Prof Liu worked there for a few years, but never felt that he or his family belonged in New York City.

As fate would have it, he was tasked to host a group from Singapore led by Mr Philip Yeo, then the chairman of the Economic Development Board.

It was in the late 1990s that Mr Yeo embarked on his programme of “kidnapping” experienced scientists to nurture young scientific talent in Singapore, and Columbia University was one of his stops.

“At the time, they were touring the whole world, visiting different genome centres as a part of the preparation to build Singapore’s own.

“After that, Mr Yeo invited me for breakfast at his hotel and, as they say, the rest was history,” Prof Liu said.

He joined GIS as a senior research scientist in 2002, and almost immediately delved into the long-overlooked realm of Asian genetics to shed light on genetic intricacies unique to Asians and diseases affecting people in this part of the world.

He wanted to find out why nasopharyngeal or nose cancer, also called the Cantonese cancer, is more prevalent in southern China than in other parts of the world.

He found that a unique strain of a common human virus – the Epstein-Barr virus – is more widespread in people from southern China.

Individuals with the strain are 11 times more likely to develop nose cancer than non-carriers.

And in 2017, he initiated the effort to map the complete set of genes of 5,000 Singaporeans, paving the way for an ongoing mega project of sequencing the genomes of 100,000 Singaporeans by 2025.

Prof Liu said his team wanted to discover risk strains for nasopharyngeal cancer among South-east Asians, and further explore early diagnosis and personalised treatment.

For his efforts, Prof Liu received the President’s Science Award in 2020.

“Sometimes you just have to take whatever is available.

“Yes, you have to make certain compromises and work on that until you find the perfect opportunity.

“If you think you can jump, jump, but just do not give up,” he said, as advice to younger researchers looking to deepen their knowledge.