Biography
Boya Distinguished Professor at the College of Future Technology, Peking University, and Director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Biotechnology from Peking University in 2000, a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) from 2006 to 2010. Since returning to China in 2011, he has been a full-time researcher at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Peking University. He has received funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China for Outstanding Youth (2017-2019) and the Distinguished Young Scholar Award (2021-2025). He currently serves as a committee member of the Stem Cell Branch of the Chinese Society for Cell Biology, the RNA Branch of the Chinese Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and is the Chairman of the RNA Youth Committee.
His research interests include stem cells, non-coding RNA, and gene editing. He has systematically elucidated the functions and mechanisms of miRNA in embryonic stem cells; invented the miRNA-activated CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing platform; discovered a new pathway PIAS4-SUMO2-DPPA2 regulating the switch between totipotent-like and pluripotent stem cells; developed a highly reproducible and cost-effective new organoid culture technology; and co-discovered new conservation rules of non-coding RNA across species. He has published over thirty papers as corresponding author in prestigious academic journals such as Nature Genetics, Nature Cell Biology, and Nature Communications.
Representative Achievements
1.Huang W. et al. Computational prediction and experimental validation identify functionally conserved lncRNAs from zebrafish to human. Nature Genetics, 2024, 56, 124-135.
2.Zhang X.S. et al. Highly reproducible and cost-effective one-pot organoid differentiation using a novel platform based on PF-127 triggered spheroid assembly.Biofabrication, 2023, 15, 045014.
3.Mi L. et al.DddA homolog search and engineering expand sequence compatibility of mitochondrial base editing.Nature Communications,2023, 14, 874.
4.Yan Y.L. et al.DPPA2/4 and SUMO E3 ligase PIAS4 opposingly regulate zygotic transcriptional program.PLOS Biology,2019, 17, e3000324.
5.Wang X.W. et al. A microRNA-inducible CRISPR-Cas9 platform serves as a microRNA sensor andcell-type-specific genome regulation tool. Nature Cell Biology,2019, 21, 522-530.
