Xiang-Dong Fu, born and raised in Wuhan, went to countryside twice without knowing where life would lead to in early days.  His life experienced a dramatic turn in 1977, admitted to Wuhan University with major in Virology.  Upon graduation, he took the CUSBEA exam in 1982, went to Case Western Reserve University for graduate schooling in 1983, and obtained the Ph.D. degree in 1988.  He was trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard from 1988 to 1992.  He joined the faculty at University of California, San Diego in 1992, promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1998, and rose to Full Professor in 2002. 

 

Dr. Fu was responsible for co-discovery of SR proteins, a family of RNA binding proteins involved in constitutive and alternative pre-mRNA processing.  His laboratory is also the first to identify a family of kinases for phosphorylating SR proteins to regulate their activities in the cell.  Dr. Fu’s laboratory has been systematically elucidating the mechanism for splice site selection and the regulation of the process in mammalian cells, using a full range of biochemical, genetic, and genomics approaches.  His laboratory also pioneers in the development of enabling technologies for large-scale studies at genomics levels.  Their more recent efforts focus on regulated gene expression at both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels.

 

Dr. Fu has published more than 100 papers in premier biomedical journals, including 14 in Nature, Cell, and Science, and 28 in Nature and Cell sister journals, Genes Dev and PNAS.  Some of his discoveries have been highlighted in major textbooks and he also wrote a chapter on RNA Processing for one of those major textbooks (Gene X) widely used for undergraduate and graduate teaching worldwide.  He reviews for all top biomedical journals in his field.  Dr. Fu’s contribution to science has been recognized by awards, including the Searle Scholar award (1994), the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar award (1997), Outstanding Wuhan University Alumnus (2003) and Elected Member of AAAS (2010).