Zheng Wang, PhD
Cards
About
Titles
Research Scientist in Biostatistics (Biostatistics)
Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Biography
Zheng Wang is a Research Scientist at the Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, Yale University. After completing a PhD at the Clark University in 2006, he held a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Iowa. He joined Yale University in 2007, and held a post-doctoral association position at the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. He is an expert on fungal taxonomy, classification and systematics. He is one of the leading authors in the Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life project funded by NSF. His research is in the field of systematics, evolutionary biology, genetics and genomics, fungus-host associations and pathogenesis. His research involve field and laboratory experiments with model species and comparative genomics/transcriptomics to understand the effects of natural selection and evolution and development of sexual/asexual reproduction in fungi. In particular, it focuses on how fungi respond to environmental factors during different stages of their life history and how these are associated with evolution and development of pathogenesis in fungal pathogens. Current projects have been funded by NIH and NSF to investigate fungal attack via germination of asexual mitotic spores to various hosts, including human, insects, fungi and plants. He has served as a reviewer for more than 40 scientific journals, including all major mycological journals. He has held several editorial appointments, including associate editor of Mycosystema and Mycology, review editor of Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
Appointments
Biostatistics
Research ScientistPrimary
Other Departments & Organizations
Education & Training
- PhD
- Clark University (2006)
- MSc
- Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing (1997)
Research
Overview
I have been exploring a range of different fungi, not just the classic genetic model Neurospora crassa. These include familiar organisms like yeasts, as well as more specialized fungi such as Coccidioides, Trichoderma, Fusarium, Metarhizium, Cordyceps, and Aspergillus species. Each of these fungi comes from a different evolutionary background, and they interact with the world in fascinating ways—either as pathogens that cause disease or as symbionts that live in harmony with other organisms. Some of these fungi have a direct impact on human health. For instance, Coccidioides and Aspergillus fumigatus are considered serious threats to humans by the World Health Organization. On the other hand, Fusarium, Metarhizium, Cordyceps, and Trichoderma species primarily affect plants, insects (including insects that spread disease, like ticks), and even other fungi. My research using these fungal models to develop an evolutionary transcriptomics system—a tool that helps us understand how these organisms evolve and function. This system addresses key public health challenges: understanding how fungal diseases develop and exploring how fungi can be used to control pests that spread diseases.
During collaborative investigation on the infection of arthropods caused by Metarhizium and Cordyceps, also known as zombie fungi, we observed an interesting negative correlation between fungal pathogens and tick-borne lyme disease, namely bacterial endosymbionts may help tick to defense infections caused by otherwise deadly fungal pathogens. Thus, applying fungal pesticides, a widely practiced biocontrol approach for ticks, would likely eliminate health ticks and promote disease carrying ticks, consequently promote lyme disease epidemics. This discovery leads to a new research subject regarding modeling the fungal roles under a holobiome setting (all bioelements, including host, microbiome, mycobiome and even virus in the system). With the remarkable advances in sequencing techniques and data science, there is a growing and exciting trend to integrate both reductive and synthetic approaches in biology. I am particularly enthusiastic about applying insights from evolutionary systems biology, gained through model species, to drive breakthroughs in engineering fungi for innovative products and potentially transformative cures for various diseases.