The Zha lab has developed novel mouse models to investigate lymphocyte development, oncogenesis and therapeutic responses under physiological conditions. The lab has extensive experience in the molecular mechanism of DNA double-strand break (DSB) repair and the DNA damage responses in the context of lymphocyte development, hematopoiesis, lymphomagenesis, and therapeutic responses. Specifically, they have developed strong expertise in analyzing the non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) DNA repair pathway and DNA damage responses during the somatic assembly (for example, V(D)J recombination) and subsequent modifications (for example, immunoglobulin class switch recombination) of the antigen receptor genes in developing lymphocytes.