Jessa Lab

We are a computational biology lab in Toronto, Canada studying gene regulation in development, disease, and therapeutic applications.

Waddington's view of the epigenetic landscape from below, with pegs and wires (genes and regulatory interactions) that shape the cell fate landscape. We add a snapped wire representing a disrupted interaction, and a new wire representing a therapeutic intervention.

We study how gene regulatory programs are established during development, how they are disrupted in disease, and how they can be engineered for therapeutics.

Our interpretation of an interpretable machine learning model, with internal mechanisms exposed.

We combine functional genomics, multi-modal data analysis, and interpretable machine learning approaches that let us crack open black box models of gene regulation to extract mechanistic insights.

News

Sep 8, 2026

We’re excited to welcome to our team Shirley Hu, Administrative Assistant, and Angela Xu, our very first MoGen rotation student!

Aug 19, 2026

Selin is appointed an Assistant Professor affiliated with the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto! That means we are officially recruiting graduate students through MoGen. MSc and PhD students interested in the lab should contact Selin to chat about rotation opportunities.

Jul 28, 2026

Dr. Selin Jessa joins the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and Sinai Health in Toronto, Canada as an Investigator! The Jessa Lab is getting ready to launch on September 1st, 2026. Stay tuned for site updates for more details on our vision and values.