Postdoctoral fellow, HHMI, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, 1997 - 2002

2. Andrew Fleming Prize, 1997, Department of Biology, University of Virginia

3. Young Scientist Award, 1996, FASEB meeting, Snowmass, Colorado

4. The Royal Society Fellowship, 1992-1993, Cambridge University

American Society for Microbiology

THE REGULATION OF CELL CYCLE TRANSITION:

The research interest in my laboratory is to understand how the regulatory pathways control the cell cycle progression by using the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as an experimental model system. A signal transduction pathway called Mitotic Exit Network (MEN) is responsible for the inactivation of cyclin dependent kinase (CDK) after chromosome segregation. One of our research interests in Dr. Wang lab is to understand the regulation of mitotic exit pathways.

Damaged DNA triggers DNA damage checkpoint pathways that arrest cell cycle progression and allow adequate time to repair the damaged DNA. Genetic defects that impair checkpoint result in genomic instability, a hallmark of cancer cells. Another research interest in this laboratory is to find the link between DNA damage checkpoints and the cell cycle machinery by investigating how various cell cycle regulatory pathways respond to DNA damage in budding yeast. Powerful cellular, genetic and biochemical approaches, along with the convenient yeast genomic database will be used to uncover the regulatory networks and their components that govern cell cycle progression.

2. Wang Y, Burke DJ. (1997) Cdc55p, the B-type regulatory subunit of protein phosphatase 2A, has multiple functions in mitosis and is required for the kinetochore/spindle checkpoint in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Mol Cell Biol. 17:620-6.

3. Tavormina PA, Wang Y, Burke DJ. (1997) Differential requirements for DNA replication in the activation of mitotic checkpoints in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Mol Cell Biol. 17:3315-22.

4. Wang Y*, Hu F*, Elledge SJ. (2000) The Bfa1/Bub2 GAP complex comprises a universal checkpoint required to prevent mitotic exit. Curr Biol. 2000 10(21):1379-82. (* equal contributor)

5. Wang H, Liu D, Wang Y, Qin J, Elledge SJ. (2001) Pds1 phosphorylation in response to DNA damage is essential for its DNA damage checkpoint function. Genes Dev. 15(11):1361-72.

6. Hu F*, Wang Y*, Liu D, Li Y, Qin J, Elledge SJ. (2001) Regulation of the Bub2/Bfa1 GAP complex by Cdc5 and cell cycle checkpoints. Cell 107(5):655-65. (*equal contributor)

7. Li Y, Bachant J, Alcasabas AA, Wang Y, Qin J, Elledge SJ. (2002) The mitotic spindle is required for loading of the DASH complex onto the kinetochore. Genes Dev. 16(2):183-97.

8. Wang Y, Shirogane T, Liu D, Harper JW, Elledge SJ. (2003) Exit from exit: resetting the cell cycle through Amn1 inhibition of G-protein signaling. Cell 112 (5):697-709

9. Wang Y. and Ng T. (2006) Phosphatase 2A negatively regulates mitotic exit in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Mol. Biol Cell 17(1) 80-89 (Epub Aug. 2005)

10. Liu H. and Wang Y. (2006) The Function and Regulation of Budding Yeast Swe1 in Response to Interrupted DNA Synthesis. Mol Biol Cell. 17:2746-56 (Epub Mar. 2006)

11. Tang X. and Wang Y. (2006) Pds1/Esp1 dependent and independent sister chromatid separation in mutants defective for protein phosphatase 2A. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 103:16290-16295

12. Jin F. and Wang Y. (2006) Budding yeast DNA damage adaptation mutants exhibit defects in mitotic exit. Cell Cycle 5:2914-9

13. Fengshan Liang and Yanchang Wang (2007) DNA damage checkpoints inhibit mitotic exit by two different pathways. Molecular and Cellular Biology 14:5067-5078

14. Yan Li, Fengshan Liang, Wei Jiang, Fusheng Yu, Rihui Cao, Qinghe Ma, Xiuyong Dai, Jiandong Jiang, Yanchang Wang*, and Shuyi Si* (2007) DH334, a Beta-carboline anti-cancer drug, inhibits the CDK activity of budding yeast. Cancer Biology and Therapy 6(8) [Epub ahead of print] *co-corresponding author

15. Yanchang Wang (2007) Chromosome stability in yeast and its implications to the study of human cancer. Frontiers in Bioscience 13:2091-2102

16. Da-Hua Fu1*, Wei Jiang1*, Jian-Ting Zheng2, Gui-Yu Zhao1, Yan Li1, Hong Yi1, Zhuo-Rong Li1, Jian-Dong Jiang1, Ke-Qian Yang2§, Yanchang Wang3§, and Shu-Yi Si1§ (2008) Jadomycin B, an Aurora-B kinase inhibitor discovered through virtual screening. Molecular Cancer and Therapeutics 7:2386-2393. §Co-corresponding author.

17. Fengzhi Jin, Hong Liu, Fengshan Liang, Raed Rizkallah, Myra M. Hurt and Yanchang Wang (2008) Temporal control of the dephosphorylation of Cdk substrates by mitotic exit pathways in budding yeast. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 105:16177-82

18. Hong Liu, Fengshan Liang, Fengzhi Jin and Yanchang Wang. (2008) The coordination of centromere replication, spindle formation and kinetochore-microtubule interaction in budding yeast. PLoS Genetics. 4:e1000262. Epub 2008 Nov 21.

19. Fengzhi Jin, Daniel Richmond, and Yanchang Wang (2009). The multiple-layer regulation of metaphase-to-anaphase transition. Cell Cycle 8:700-704.