Professor Xin Xiang
Uniformed Services University, USA
Talk Title
Microtubule-based organelle distribution inside a fungal hypha
Biography
Xin obtained her BS and MS degrees in Biology from Peking University and obtained her PhD from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. During her postdoctoral work in the lab of Ron Morris, she studied nuclear-distribution (nud) mutants of Aspergillus nidulans and contributed to discovering the functional connection between cytoplasmic dynein and LIS1, the product of the causal gene of lissencephaly. In 1999, she established her lab at the Uniformed Services University – F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, where she is currently a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Her lab uses Aspergillus nidulans as a genetic system to study proteins involved in cytoplasmic dynein-mediated transport of organelles inside fungal hyphae. Major contributions made by her lab include finding a role of kinesin-1 in dynein accumulation at the microtubule plus ends and the importance of kinesin-1 autoinhibition in dynein-mediated early endosome transport, a role of dynactin and the Hook complex in linking dynein to early endosomes, and a role of LIS1 in dynein activation.