Xiaoyong Yang, PhD

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.