Wu Ligang
Professor
Biochemistry and Cell Biology
Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences
China
Biography
WU Ligang is a Professor Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China. Research Areas: Mechanisms of gene expression regulation by microRNA and RNAi.
Research Interest
The cells of various eukaryotic organisms contain numerous small and long non-coding RNAs (ncRNA). However, to the majority of those ncRNAs, the questions as basic as whether they have functions and their regulatory mechanisms are still mysterious. Our previous studies have shown that microRNA (miRNA) destabilize messages to which they are partially complementary by expediting poly(A) tail removal, and further identified CAF1 as the nuclease responsible for mRNA deadenylation mediated by miRNA and off-target RNAi caused by partially complementary siRNA. More recently, we revealed a new function of miRNA in the cells that miRNAs can serve as a surveillance system to repress nonsense mRNAs by recognizing miRNA-responsive elements in the open reading frame region downstream of the premature termination codon. We will continue to focus on discovering novel functions of ncRNAs and elucidating their molecular mechanisms in cell fate determination, which will allow us to develop advanced technology to manipulate gene expression for both basic research and therapeutic applications. The current projects in this laboratory including: 1) Studying mechanism of small non-coding RNA in gene regulation. 2) Developing new strategy to improve the efficiency and specificity of RNAi and CRISPR. 3) Using high-throughput screening method to identify the function of small and long non-coding RNA in cell fate determination and uncover the molecular mechanism.
Publications
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Shang R, Zhang F, Xu B, Xi H, Zhang X, Wang W, and Wu L*. Ribozyme-enhanced single-stranded Ago2-processed interfering RNA triggers efficient gene silencing with fewer off-target effects. Nat Commun. (2015) 6:8430.
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Yang Q, Lin J, Liu M, Li R, Tian B, Zhang X, Xu B, Liu M, Zhang X, Li Y, Shi H*, Wu L*. Highly Sensitive Sequencing Reveals Dynamic Modifications and Activities of Small RNAs in Mouse Oocytes and Early Embryos. Sci Adv. (2016) Vol. 2, no. 6, e1501482.
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Du H, Zhao Y, He J, Zhang Y, Xi H, Liu M, Ma J* and Wu L*. YTHDF2 destabilizes m6A-containing RNA through direct recruitment of the CCR4-NOT deadenylase complex. Nat Commun. (2016) 7:12626.
