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Xiaoyong Yang, PhD

Professor of Comparative Medicine and of Cellular and Molecular Physiology
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Contact Info

Comparative Medicine

310 Cedar Street, PO Box 208016

New Haven, CT 06520-8016

United States

About

Titles

Professor of Comparative Medicine and of Cellular and Molecular Physiology

Biography

Dr. Xiaoyong Yang is Professor of Comparative Medicine and of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine. He received his B.S. from Nankai University, M.S. from Peking University, and Ph.D. from University of Alabama at Birmingham. He completed his postdoctoral training with Dr. Ronald Evans at The Salk Institute. Dr. Yang works at the intersection of diabetes, obesity, and cancer. He has made pioneering contributions to deciphering biological information encoded in protein modifications. Dr. Yang has published highly cited articles in scientific journals such as Cell, Cell Metabolism, Nature, Nature Medicine, and has been featured in public media outlets such as TIME, Daily Mail, NPR, and Scientific American. He has served on scientific review panels for the NIH, NASA, American Diabetes Association, American Cancer Society, The Medical Research Council, The Wellcome Trust, and other agencies worldwide. Dr. Yang is the founder of the Cancer Metabolism Initiative (CAMI) and a member of the Dean’s Faculty Advisory Council at Yale School of Medicine. He holds an adjunct professor position at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Yang has played leadership roles in professional organizations as president of CADA and vice president of SAPA. He has been elected to the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.

Appointments

Education & Training

Postdoctoral Fellow
The Salk Institute (2008)
PhD
University of Alabama at Birmingham (2001)
MS
Peking University (1996)
BS
Nankai University (1993)

Research

Overview

The long-range goal of our research is to understand signaling and transcriptional mechanisms governing metabolism in response to environmental and genetic cues, and to design strategies to battle metabolic diseases.

Diet and the day/night cycle are principle environmental cues that control intermediary metabolism. Nutrient flux into the cell triggers protein modification by the amino sugar called N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc). This dynamic and reversible posttranslational modification is emerging as a key regulator of diverse cellular processes. Our first goal is to elucidate how O-GlcNAc acts as a nutrient sensor to couple systemic metabolic status to cellular regulation of signal transduction, transcription, and protein degradation. It is crucial to understand how perturbations in this posttranslational modification contribute to human diseases including diabetes, obesity, cancer and aging.

Both diet and light affect the body’s circadian rhythms. Our second goal is to unravel molecular links between the circadian clock and metabolic physiology. On the basis of our finding of broad expression and tissue-specific oscillation of nuclear receptors, we would like to determine potential roles of nuclear receptors in integrating circadian signals from nutritional cues and the light-sensing central clock to entrain peripheral clocks, and in coupling peripheral clocks to divergent metabolic outputs. There are the emerging links between circadian rhythm disorders and diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. We plan to explore novel strategies for treating these interrelated diseases.

To approach these goals, a combination of cutting-edge tools are employed, including biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology, mouse genetics, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and physiology.

Positions are available in my lab for highly motivated graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who are interested in exploring the frontier of research on metabolic physiology.

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Biochemistry; Circadian Rhythm; Diabetes Mellitus; Genetics; Genomics; Molecular Biology; Neoplasms; Physiology; Proteomics; Signal Transduction; Systems Biology

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Xiaoyong Yang's published research.

Publications

2024

2023

2022

2020

2019

2018

2017

Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

  • activity

    The National Institutes of Health

  • activity

    Frontiers in Endocrinology

  • activity

    Frontiers in Aging

  • activity

    Journal of Endocrinology

  • activity

    Journal of Molecular Endocrinology

Get In Touch

Contacts

Mailing Address

Comparative Medicine

310 Cedar Street, PO Box 208016

New Haven, CT 06520-8016

United States

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