Zhou Xuyu

Biography

Prof. Zhou graduated from Shandong University in 1993 and received his Ph.D degree from Osaka University, Japan in 2001. From 2003 to 2009, he was trained as a postdoctoral at University of California, San Francisco. In the fall of 2009, Dr. Zhou joined the Institute of Microbiology as a professor supported by “one hundred talents program” of Chinese Academy of Sciences.  

Research Interest

The Treg Research Group focuses on understanding the immune regulation of regulatory T cells (Treg). Treg are a specialized CD4+ T cell lineage that plays a central role in the preservation of self-tolerance and whose dysfunction has been implicated in autoimmune. Research in our laboratory is aimed at decipher the mechanism of Treg suppression and their identity control. We found that the essential role for microRNA-dependent regulation of gene expression in the maintenance of Treg-cell-specific deletion of dicer developed a spontaneous, aggressive autoimmune disease that was indistinguishable from that observed in mice that lack Foxp3 or Treg cells. One of major research goals in our laboratory are extending our previous work and determining the individual microRNAs and microRNA targets that are important in maintaining Treg identity. More recently, we have demonstrated the instability of the transcription factor Foxp3 invivo, now we are investigating the molecular basis underlying their functional stability.