Research Areas and Directions
Our lab focuses on understanding how bacteria regulate their division and growth at the molecular level while maintaining characteristic cell morphology. We aim to uncover the structural and dynamic changes of cytoskeletal proteins in model and pathogenic bacteria, as well as their molecular mechanisms in regulating cell wall synthesis and degradation. This is achieved through a combination of molecular and cell biology, biochemistry, super-resolution, and single-molecule fluorescence microscopy techniques.
Main Research Directions
1. Molecular mechanisms of cell wall and outer membrane remodeling during cell division.
2. Mechanisms by which prokaryotic cytoskeletal proteins regulate the three-dimensional morphology of bacterial cells.
3. Development of high-throughput super-resolution imaging and single-molecule detection methods suitable for prokaryotic cells.
Position
Special Researcher, with a Bachelor's and Doctorate from the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University. Postdoctoral and Research Associate experience at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA, studying bacterial cell division mechanisms. Discovered the dynamic treadmilling assembly behavior of the prokaryotic cell division cytoskeletal protein FtsZ and its molecular-level regulatory mechanisms on cell wall synthases.
Representative Publications
1. Yang, X*., McQuillen, R., Lyu, Z., Phillips-Mason, P., De La Cruz, A., McCausland, J. W., ... & Xiao, J*. (2021). A two-track model for the spatiotemporal coordination of bacterial septal cell wall synthesis revealed by single-molecule imaging of FtsW. *Nature Microbiology*, 6(5), 584-593.
2. Bohrer, C. H., Yang, X., Thakur, S., Weng, X., Tenner, B., McQuillen, R., ... & Xiao, J*. (2021). A pairwise distance distribution correction (DDC) algorithm to eliminate blinking-caused artifacts in SMLM. *Nature Methods*, 18(6), 669-677.
3. McCausland, J. W., Yang, X., Squyres, G. R., Lyu, Z., Bruce, K. E., Lamanna, M. M., ... & Liu, J*. (2021). Treadmilling FtsZ polymers drive the directional movement of sPG-synthesis enzymes via a Brownian ratchet mechanism. *Nature Communications*, 12(1), 1-13.
4. Wooten, M., Snedeker, J., Nizami, Z. F., Yang, X., Ranjan, R., Urban, E., ... & Chen, X*. (2019). Asymmetric histone inheritance via strand-specific incorporation and biased replication fork movement. *Nature Structural & Molecular Biology*, 26(8), 732-743.
5. Yang, X., Lyu, Z., Miguel, A., McQuillen, R., Huang, K. C*., & Xiao, J*. (2017). GTPase activity–coupled treadmilling of the bacterial tubulin FtsZ organizes septal cell wall synthesis. *Science*, 355(6326), 744-747.
For all publications, see:
GoogleScholar: [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=yThadE0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=yThadE0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao)
PubMed: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/xinxing.yang.1/bibliography/public/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/xinxing.yang.1/bibliography/public/)
The team is recruiting postdoctoral fellows and associate researchers. We welcome outstanding Ph.D. graduates with backgrounds in microbiology, biophysics, biochemistry, or optical imaging technology. Additionally, we warmly invite students interested in microbiology and biophysics to pursue doctoral studies in our lab.
Email: xinxingyang@ustc.edu.cn