Prof. Ning Wang is the founding director of the Institute for Mechanobiology at Northeastern University. With an inspiring career as a mechanobiologist, who has been at the forefront of many ground-breaking discoveries, Prof. Wang initially thought that he might have to work on a farm in his teenage years and could not imagine going to a university for higher education. When his circumstances changed, he entered the B.S program at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, followed by a master’s in biomedical engineering. He got his doctorate in science (D.Sc.) from Harvard University, where he continued his postdoctoral training and became an assistant and associate professor at the university. In 2006, he became a tenured full professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He moved to Northeastern University in 2023 and founded the Institute for mechanobiology in 2024. Prof. Wang is visiting us on December 10th, and we had a zoom meeting ahead of his visit to talk about his research, his learnings and personal reflections from such an accomplished scientific career.
When and how did you develop an interest in biomechanics?
The cell is very interesting, but I didn’t know anything about cells in high school. I intended to become an engineer. In my second year in college, Prof. Y. C Fung, the father of modern biomechanics, came from the United States to China and gave a talk about the mechanical properties of tissues. I was intrigued by his talk on mechanical features of different tissues like blood vessels, bones and even soft tissues. This talk prompted me to switch my major from solid mechanics to biomechanics in the 3rd year of my college. Asking questions like how stiff a cell or tissue is and why this mechanical property is important to the tissue shaped my interest further in biomechanics. I focused on understanding the inside-out and outside-in transmission of mechanical signals in addition to biochemical and even electrical signals. I worked with Prof. Don Ingber to address these questions, in early 90’s, that piqued my interest and our early work in this field resulted in the identification of integrins as mechanosensors.
You have had the opportunity to follow or work with pioneers in the field of biomechanics, such as Prof. Fung and Prof. Ingber early on in your career. What have been some important learnings from your mentors?
I was fortunate enough to work with these pioneers and it has helped shape my own view and understanding of this branch of biology that we now call mechanobiology. Prof. Y.C. Fung had a background in aerospace mechanics, and he moved to the field of biomechanics in the 1960S. Dr. Fung worked on cardiovascular and pulmonary mechanics that undergo force-driven shape changes. He used to always think about mechanical stability of a given structure. Prof. Ingber is a biologist and has a great intuition on structural integrity of cells and tissues. They shaped my thought on fundamental questions like what is the mechanical basis of biology? What are the mechanical parameters like force and stiffness that shape and influence the function of the cell.
What are some specific questions in this field that you are currently excited about?
There are several. Firstly, I am very interested in embryonic development. There is growing evidence that mechanical factors such as stiffness of tissues, geometry and curvature influence morphogenesis and pattern formation. However, it is still unclear how early embryogenesis and morphogenesis are governed. If we understand these early events, it will give us a better insight into tissue morphogenesis and pattern formations.
Secondly, after development, what fascinates me is cell differentiation. We all come from one cell and become a fully-formed adult human being containing ̴30 trillion cells! How are all these cells packaged together so precisely with all these tissues integrated into a human-being with specific form and function?
Thirdly, DNA is the same in all human beings, except it makes different proteins because of differential gene expression. How is this decision made? We have some data suggesting that mechanical factors, in addition to biochemical signals, play a role in that decision by working together. If a cell is exposed to mechanical perturbations as well as exposed to various biochemical signals like cytokines, growth factors or even antibodies, cells make decisions to integrate their responses to all these incoming signals. This point of integration is not well understood but is important to our understanding of how cells maintain their optimal function.
You have worked extensively on cellular mechanotransduction, and your focus has also been on generation of tools and techniques to study the effect of forces on cells, which has helped progress this field. What do you think are some of the challenges that lie ahead in addressing the questions that you have talked about?
In the last 100 years, science has advanced so much and people with good ideas have also come up with new technologies- electron microscopy, cryo-EM, super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, to name a few, when it just comes to visualization. There are many molecular biology techniques too that have contributed to this progress. When it comes to mechanobiology, a long-standing challenge is how to measure and quantify forces in vivo. We can measure forces in 2D cell culture, 3D cultures and in tissues. Measuring the force that a T-cell would exert on a tumor cell to kill it, or the force that cells exert on each other within a tissue can’t be measured. We need some innovations in that direction.
What is your favorite aspect of research, what makes you get up in the morning excited to do research?
I am very fascinated by the animal world, any living creature that moves fascinates me. There are many cell-biological advances that have been made in the past 50 years, but there is still so much to discover. That’s what excites me! I always tell my students and trainees not to take any finding for granted. They need to think about it, question it and design experiments to challenge it. DON’T BE INTIMIDATED BY THE DOGMA, the prevailing view! The best scientists can rewrite textbooks. That to me is exciting!
Is there any specific experiment or discovery that you are very proud of?
Frankly, there were many times we did experiments with unexpected results-and I say, Oh that’s exciting! First question-Is this an artefact? If not, then what could explain this result? When I was in Harvard, we observed long-distance force transmission from one site of the cell to the other. We used GFP-tagged mitochondrial cytochrome C as a marker, and applied force on cell surface integrins locally. Surprisingly, we found that mitochondria traveling on microtubules on the opposite side of the cell, that did not see this force, had a synchronized movement with the mitochondria at the site where the force was applied! This did not agree with the prevailing view that local forces produce local changes (local deformation). We initially thought this was wrong, but we later realized that this long-distance force propagation is indeed true! It does go through the stress fibers which connect with microtubules which in turn interact with mitochondria and thus move with the same frequency as the region where force is applied, and we were able to quantify that! Anything unexpected makes me happy!
Is there an example for a setback and your learnings from it?
Of course, we see many setbacks as scientists! I will tell all young scientists, don’t expect all ideas to work. Many ideas look good on paper. I thought many of my ideas will work, but they never always worked. Sometimes you doubt yourself and your ideas, may be because your paper got rejected. Many times, the reviewers are right, and they point out the weaknesses in your work. Treat criticism as an opportunity to improve yourself. If you think you haven’t explained your work well to the reviewer, then you need to put yourself in the reviewers’ shoes and think as to how to improve your work and address those weaknesses. Another important trait of a scientist is persistence, an idea may take time to work. Therefore, it’s important to have persistence in pursuing your ideas. I think it’s important NOT to give up when you have a setback.
What would be your philosophy when approaching scientific questions or problems? I gather it would be to keep an open-mind?
Yes. I am very open-minded. I take criticism very constructively. Very often I realize that critical feedback has helped improve myself and my research.
What does ‘success’ mean to you?
I want all people coming to my lab to be successful. I tell my students and trainees that your goal in my lab is not to learn techniques, your goal is to learn about scientific thinking and reasoning. My hope is that everyone who comes out of my lab is a better scientist than I am, and if I achieve that goal, I will call myself successful. My success depends on my students and trainees’ success.
What does the word mentorship mean to you?
I always view my students and trainees like scientific partners more than mentees. As a professor, I may have more experience and may know the field slightly better, but young people bring fresh ideas! When I teach the mechanobiology course, my students ask me very good questions! That gets me very excited! When the students and trainees in my lab come up with ideas, I always encourage them to test the idea. I don’t like the word ‘boss’, we are all colleagues, just younger and older! The success of young scientists is important for the future success of this country!
I will also say that in any kind of scientific training, learning the skills, technology and knowledge of the field is very important, but those are not the MOST important things. The most important thing to learn in a scientific setting is the ability to generate your own ideas. In short, I would say developing ‘wisdom’ is important. Wisdom is something you cannot inherit from your parents or learn from your mentors. It is something you learn from your experiences and your own judgement.
What is your advice for young scientists- PhDs and postdocs?
Have fun! Have fun with science. Hard-work is a necessary condition for success, but not sufficient. You may have ideas, and you may work hard, but if you are not having fun, it is hard to sustain your interest in science. (Note: Dr. Wang insists that this is not his advice but personal reflection).
Information on Prof. Wang’s research can be found at: