1. Uncover the novel and unique function of vitamin C during iPS generation.
Vitamin C is one of the essential and necessary nutrient factors for human health. During Dr.Wang’s Ph.D. training he found that this natural product plays surprising roles in somatic reprogramming to facilitate iPS generation, and later on, it is demonstrated that vitamin C also improve iPS cell quality. vitamin C alleviates aberrant induction of p53 due to forced high expression of transcription factors (sox2,klf4,oct4 and c-Myc) in somatic cells during iPS generation thus it ameliorates cell senescence to facilitate the induction of iPS generation. Now vitamin C is widely used for somatic reprogramming in worldwide.
2. Identification of the important Histone demethylases that involved in somatic reprogramming
Histone modifications plays key roles in cell lineage commitment and maintenance through epigenetic regulation of transcription so it is expected that histone modifying enzymes may participate in iPS generation. Dr.Wang screened jumonji family proteins and found that kdm2a and kdm2b can significantly enhance somatic reprogramming efficiency, especially in the presence of vitamin C. Their results reveal a role for H3K36me and H3K9me in cell fate determination and establish a link between histone demethylases and vitamin C during induced cell fate transition.
3. Uncover a novel DNA methylation(N6mA) in mammalian Stem Cells
In Dr.Andrew.Xiao Lab at Yale University, Dr.Wang worked along with his colleagues to uncover a novel DNA methylation,N6mA, in mouse embryonic stem cell. It is well recongnized that N6mA modification widely existed in prokaryotic cell, moreover it is one of the abundant modifications in RNA molecule. Their report presented data to support that N6mA methylation also exist in DNA molecule with low abundance. The function of this novel modification is intensely investigating.
