Draft:Keith Cheng
 | Review waiting, please be patient.
This may take 2 months or more, since drafts are reviewed in no specific order. There are 2,357 pending submissions waiting for review.
Where to get help
How to improve a draft
You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Editor resources
Reviewer tools
|
Where to get help
How to improve a draft
You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Editor resources
This draft has been resubmitted and is currently awaiting re-review. |  |
Keith C. Cheng | |
|---|---|
| Education | Harvard University (BA) New York University School of Medicine (MD) University of Washington (PhD) |
| Known for | Identification of SLC24A5 as a determinant of human skin color X-ray histotomography |
| Awards | Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2020) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Pathology, genetics, biological imaging |
| Institutions | Penn State College of Medicine |
Keith C. Cheng is an American pathologist and geneticist. He is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Department of Molecular and Precision Medicine at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania.[1] His laboratory led the 2005 study that identified the gene SLC24A5 as a major determinant of light skin pigmentation in Europeans, using the golden mutant of the zebrafish as a model.[2][3] He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2020.[4]
Education and early career
[edit]Cheng received a BA in biochemical sciences from Harvard University and an MD from New York University School of Medicine. He began residency training in anatomic pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and completed it at the University of Washington, where he also earned a PhD in molecular genetics in 1987 for work on Chi hotspots of genetic recombination in bacteriophage, conducted at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He remained at the University of Washington for postdoctoral training on mechanisms of mutation from 1987 to 1992.[5][6]
Cheng joined the Penn State College of Medicine as an assistant professor of pathology in 1992.[6]
Research
[edit]Skin pigmentation genetics
[edit]Cheng's laboratory conducted genetic screens in zebrafish to identify genes related to cancer and genomic instability.[7] In work published in Science in 2005, his group showed that the zebrafish golden pigmentation mutant is caused by a mutation in the gene slc24a5, which encodes a putative cation exchanger localized to the melanosome, and that the human ortholog SLC24A5 carries a coding polymorphism whose variant allele is nearly fixed in European populations and is associated with lighter skin pigmentation.[2] The variant was estimated to account for a substantial fraction of the skin pigmentation difference between people of European and West African ancestry.[8] The study received coverage in mainstream media, including The New York Times,[9] and was later reviewed in the pigment cell literature as an application of a model organism to the genetics of a human trait.[3][10]
Imaging and phenomics
[edit]Cheng founded a web-based atlas of zebrafish microanatomy in 2007 and directs the Zebrafish Functional Genomics Core at the Penn State College of Medicine.[5][4] His laboratory developed X-ray histotomography, a micro-CT-based method for three-dimensional histology that allows tissue and cellular detail to be studied in whole small organisms without physical sectioning.[4] In 2024, he was awarded a four-year, $3.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to extend the technique to additional tissues, cell types, and model organisms, in collaboration with physicists at Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.[11]
Honors
[edit]Cheng was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the 2020 class, cited for distinguished contributions to functional genomics and imaging, particularly related to zebrafish as a model organism for human disease and skin pigmentation genetics.[4]
References
[edit]- ↑ "Keith Cheng". Institute of Energy and the Environment. Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved August 8, 2026.
- 1 2 Lamason, Rebecca L.; Mohideen, Manzoor-Ali P. K.; Mest, Jason R.; et al. (December 16, 2005). "SLC24A5, a Putative Cation Exchanger, Affects Pigmentation in Zebrafish and Humans". Science. 310 (5755): 1782–1786. Bibcode:2005Sci...310.1782L. doi:10.1126/science.1116238. PMID 16357253.
- 1 2 Secko, David (December 23, 2005). "Gene implicated in human pigment variation". Genome Biology. 5. doi:10.1186/gb-spotlight-20051223-01.
- 1 2 3 4 "Cheng elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science". Penn State Health News. January 14, 2021. Retrieved August 8, 2026.
- 1 2 "Keith Cheng, MD, PhD". Cheng Lab. Retrieved August 8, 2026.
- 1 2 "Keith C Cheng". Loop. Frontiers. Retrieved August 8, 2026.
- ↑ "The Cheng Lab". Cheng Lab. Retrieved August 8, 2026.
- ↑ "A golden fish reveals pigmentation loss in Europeans". Science in the Classroom. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved August 8, 2026.
- ↑ Wade, Nicholas (December 16, 2005). "Gene That Determines Skin Color Is Discovered, Scientists Report". The New York Times. Retrieved August 8, 2026.
- ↑ Quillen, Ellen E.; Shriver, Mark D. (2008). "SLC24A5: exchanging genetic and biochemical knowledge". Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research. 21 (3): 344–345. doi:10.1111/j.1755-148X.2008.00456.x. PMID 18397209.
- ↑ "Keith Cheng awarded $3.8M grant from NIH for 3D imaging project". Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. Pennsylvania State University. 2024. Retrieved August 8, 2026.
- promotional language: see Words to watch;
- personal commentary: opinions or direct addresses to the reader;
- informal language.
Instead, only summarize in your own words a range of independent, reliable, published sources that discuss the subject.