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Min Wu

Associate Professor in Cell Biology
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Contact Info

Min Wu Lab

333 Cedar St, P.O. Box 208002

New Haven, CT 06520

United States

About

Titles

Associate Professor in Cell Biology

Biography

Min Wu was born and raised in Nanjing, China. She received her undergraduate degree from Peking University in chemistry. She then completed her Ph.D in the lab of Barbara Baird at Cornell University, working on the interface between patterned supported lipid bilayers and immune cells. Her post-doctoral training was with Pietro De Camilli at Yale University, where she developed a cell-free reconstitution system for endocytosis. She started her independent career at the National University of Singapore as an assistant professor in 2011 and was promoted to a tenured associate professor in 2018. She was a principal investigator of the Center for Bioimaging Sciences, a principal investigator of the Mechanobiology Institute and a National Research Foundation fellow. In 2020, she was recruited to join the Department of Cell Biology at Yale University. The Wu lab studies single cell oscillations and travelling waves, membrane curvature, and cell size homeostasis.

Dr. Min Wu's Google Scholar Page, ORCID.

Appointments

Education & Training

DPhil
Cornell University, Chemistry (2006)
BSc
Peking University, Chemistry (2000)

Research

Overview

Endocytic trafficking

  • During my postdoctoral training, I developed a cell-free system that reconstituted clathrin-dependent budding and dynamin-dependent fission reaction from plasma membrane sheets (Wu et al., Nature Cell Biology, 2010). We showed the cooperation of two classic forms of membrane trafficking intermediates: coated vesicles and membrane tubules.
  • Using a combination of cell free reconstitution, single molecule imaging and cryo-electron tomography (in collaboration with Ruben Fernandez-Busnadiego lab), my lab discovered that dynamic turnover of clathrin during the assembly phase provides a proofreading checkpoint that is essential for cargo sorting in endocytosis (Chen Y et al., JCB 2019).

Pattern formation

  • We are the first to show that membrane-bending F-BAR proteins form travelling waves in cells (Wu et al., PNAS 2013). Two types of waves were observed (travelling waves and standing waves), and standing waves but not travelling waves are coupled with calcium oscillations. This unexpected observation was made in the course of investigating stimulation-dependent endocytosis, and it was motivated by findings from my cell-free reconstitution system.
  • My lab later showed that these F-BAR waves are collective waves of endocytosis (Yang et al., Dev Cell 2017). These findings suggest individual budding events (namely formation of clathrin-coated pits) have non-autonomous effects that could positively feedback on each other, which lead to their partial synchronization.

Size Scaling

  • Cortical oscillations arise by delayed negative feedback mechanisms. My lab demonstrated that the negative feedbacks came from SHIP1-dependent degradation of Phosphatidylinositol (3,4,5)-trisphosphate, or PIP₃. Optogenetically tuning PI3K activation could modulate oscillation frequencies, indicating the activity level of PI3K is frequency-encoded (Xiong et al., Nature Chemical Biology 2016).
  • In collaboration with Jian Liu group, we proposed a curvature-dependent mechanochemical feedback model to explain the ultrafast propagation speed which is 10-100 times faster than most reaction-diffusion type of cortical waves (Wu, Su et al., Nature Communication 2018). It can be thought of as a hybrid between trigger waves and phase waves.
  • If changes in oscillation periods are not coupled with those of propagation speed, wavelengths of the cortical waves could be varied by simply changing oscillation frequency. We discovered that in mitotic cells, frequencies and wavelengths of mitotic waves scaled with cell size (Xiao et al., Dev Cell, 2017). In addition, cortical waves predict site of division in metaphase, much earlier than any known spindle-dependent mechanisms.

Cell size and growth

  • Do cells know their sizes during cell growth? We developed a simple PDMS channel system to investigate cell size homeostasis (how a population of cells correct for size or growth variations and maintain their uniform size distribution). We found the presence of cryptic cell size checkpoints in mammalian cells but they were not the rate-limiting step for cells to enter S-phase. Instead, they grow a constant amount during G1-phase (“adder principle”, or size-independent net growth) and reach size homeostasis in a few generations (Varsano et al., Cell Reports 2017). Our work is the first to suggest this two-tier model in mammalian cells but it echos with the classic findings in budding and fission yeasts.

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Cell Shape; Endocytosis; Growth; Homeostasis; Nanotechnology; Nonlinear Dynamics; Organelle Biogenesis; Phosphoinositide Phosphatases; Wavelet Analysis

Research at a Glance

Research Interests

Research topics Min Wu is interested in exploring.

Publications

2024

2023

2021

2020

2019

Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

  • activity

    Journal of Cell Biology Editorial Board

Get In Touch

Contacts

Academic Office Number
Lab Number
Mailing Address

Min Wu Lab

333 Cedar St, P.O. Box 208002

New Haven, CT 06520

United States

Locations

  • SHM C232B

    Academic Office

    Sterling Hall of Medicine, C-Wing

    333 Cedar Street

    New Haven, CT 06510

  • SHM C232

    Lab

    Sterling Hall of Medicine, C-Wing

    333 Cedar Street

    New Haven, CT 06510