Fei Wang
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Biology
Making eggs and sperm requires a cell to rebuild itself. During meiosis, a special cell division that halves the chromosome number, cells must change which genes they use, replace parts of their internal machinery, and destroy specific proteins at exactly the right time.
- Fields
Biology
Genetics
Biochemistry
- Topics
autophagy
gametogenesis
meiosis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2030
What they work on
- Determine how autophagy, the cell's self-digestion system, promotes gametogenesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae across meiosis entry, DNA replication, meiosis exit and spore membrane formation, using yeast genetics, biochemistry and imaging.
- Determine how the gametogenesis program regulates autophagy, building on the finding that Cdc14 directs selective destruction of the translation-blocking protein Rim4 during meiosis.
- Investigate how heat and oxidative stress affect meiosis through meiosis-specific stress granules (RNA–protein clumps that pause protein production), including why they resist autophagy and how they relate to DNA replication.
More about the research
Autophagy, the cell's recycling system that digests its own components, is essential at several of these steps. How it is directed during gamete formation (gametogenesis) is mostly unknown. Errors in meiosis in humans are linked to infertility, miscarriage and chromosome disorders.
Why it matters
The project is basic research on how cells quality-control the making of eggs and sperm. If the mechanisms found in yeast hold in humans, they could shed light on infertility and miscarriage. They could also inform understanding of chromosome-number disorders such as Turner syndrome (monosomy X) and Down syndrome (trisomy 21).
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Luke Berchowitz
Columbia University, NY·Biochemistry
Determine the molecular mechanism by which multi-site phosphorylation rapidly reverses amyloid-like Rim4 into oligomers and monomers at the onset of meiosis II in budding yeast.
Soni Lacefield
Dartmouth College, NH·Genetics
Adapt HyperTRIBE, which tags an RNA-binding protein so it marks the RNAs it contacts, to identify the direct mRNA targets of PATL2, PUM1 and PUM2 in mouse oocytes and early embryos, and test how loss of one protein shifts the others' targets.
Amy MacQueen
Wesleyan University, CT·Genetics
Define how the N terminus of Zip1, a synaptonemal complex building block, works with the Zip3 SUMO ligase to promote crossover recombination in budding yeast, using structure-function genetic analysis.
The school
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center: 40 labs on PI Pages, $869M a year on research, 86 research doctorates a year.
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