To understand the mechanistic regulation underlying tumorigenesis of normal cells is a long-term interest of his scientific research.Recently,taken hepatocytes as the experimental system,his lab has initiated studies on cell lineage conversion,specifically focusing on induction of functional hepatocyte-like cells from cells of nonhepatic origin.Striving to understand these two seemingly different phenomena,they find themselves in querying the essential scientific question: How is cell identity maintained through preventing the conversion of terminally differentiated cells to other cell types,including transdifferentiation to different lineages and transformation to tumor cells? They wish that with the efforts to address this question they would eventually contribute to the development of novel therapies for liver diseases and cancers.