Honours and Awards

• National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC) Research Scientist Award

• Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Researcher

• Canadian Instiute for Medical Research (CIHR) New Investigator Award

• Special honor awarded by the Director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Research interests

To determine the genetic and epigenetic basis of leukemia and other types of cancer.

Introduction

The laboratory focuses on the molecular basis of cancer, especially about how cell signaling regulates chromatin modification, transcription, and other events in the nucleus. Two major lines of research are to address: 1) how cell signaling orchestrates different post-translational modifications such as phosphorylation, lysine acetylation, lysine methylation and sumoylation to regulate protein function in a coordinated fashion; and 2) how histone acetyltransferases and histone deacetylases are involved in regulating chromatin structure and function, gene expression, and cancer development.

Selected publications:

1. Yang, X.J. and Grégoire, S. (2006) A recurrent phospho-sumoyl switch in transcriptional repression and beyond. Mol. Cell 23, 779-786.

2. Kim, S., Sprung, R., Chen, Y., Xu, Y., Ball, H., Pei, J., Cheng, T., Kho, Y., Xiao, H., Lin Xiao, L., Grishin, N.V., White, M., Yang, X.J., and Zhao, Y. (2006) Substrate and functional diversity of lysine acetylation revealed by a proteomics survey. Mol. Cell 23, 607-618.

3. Yang, X.J. and Grégoire, S. (2005) Class II histone deacetylases: from sequence to function, regulation and clinical implication. Mol. Cell. Biol. 25, 2873-2884.

4. Yang, X.J. (2004) Multisite protein modification and intramolecular signaling. Oncogene 24, 1653-1662.

5. Wang, A.H., Bertos, N.R., Vezmar, M., Pelletier, N., Crosato, M., Heng, H.H., Th’ng, J., Han, J., and Yang, X.J. (1999) HDAC4, a human histone deacetylase related to yeast HDA1, is a transcriptional corepressor. Mol. Cell. Biol. 19, 7816-7827.

6. Champagne, N., Bertos, N.R., Pelletier, N., Wang, A. H., Vezmar, M., Yang, Y., Heng, H. H., and Yang, X.J. (1999) Identification of a human histone acetyltransferase related to monocytic leukemia zinc finger protein. J. Biol. Chem. 274, 28528-28536.

7. Yang, X.-J., Ogryzko, V.V., Nishikawa, J., Howard, B.H., and Nakatani, Y. (1996) A p300/CBP-associated factor that competes with the adenoviral E1A oncoprotein. Nature 382, 319-324.