Biography
Yigong Shi received his Bachelor’s Degree in Biology with highest honor from Tsinghua University in 1989 and obtained his Ph.D. in Biophysics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1995. Following a two-year postdoctoral research period at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, he joined the faculty of Molecular Biology at Princeton University as an Assistant Professor in 1998 and was promoted to Full Professor in 2003. He was named Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor of Molecular Biology in 2007. A year later, Dr. Shi resigned from Princeton University, declined an offer of an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and returned to Tsinghua University where he led the development of biomedical research community for a decade. In April 2018, Shi was elected as the Founding President of Westlake University, the first new type of research university in China.
History
2013
Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
2013
Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences
2013
Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Research
Combining structural biology, biochemical and biophysical approaches to elucidate the molecular and chemical basis of fundamental cellular events. We are particularly interested in the regulation of apoptosis, the assembly and dynamics of macromolecular machineries exemplified by spliceosome and proteasome, and the mechanism of regulated intramembrane proteolysis with a focus on the structure and function of γ-secretase, a 4-component membrane complex that is associated with the development of Alzheimer's disease.
Representative Publications
1. Rui Bai, Ruixue Wan*, Lin Wang, Kui Xu, Qiangfeng Zhang, Jianlin Lei, Yigong Shi* (2021). Structure of the activated human minor spliceosome. Science, 371(6535): eabg0879. (*co-corresponding authors)
2. Guanghui Yang, Rui Zhou, Xuefei Guo, Chuangye Yan, Jianlin Lei, Yigong Shi (2020). Structural basis of γ-secretase inhibition and modulation by small molecule drugs. Cell, 184(2): 521-533.
3. Rui Bai, Ruixue Wan*, Chuangye Yan, Qi Jia, Jianlin Lei, Yigong Shi* (2020). Mechanism of spliceosome remodeling by the ATPase/helicase Prp2 and its coactivator Spp2. Science, 371(6525): eabe8863. (*co-corresponding authors)
4. Ruixue Wan, Rui Bai, Chuangye Yan, Jianlin Lei, Yigong Shi (2019). Structures of the Catalytically Activated Yeast Spliceosome Reveal the Mechanism of Branching. Cell, 177(2): 339-351.
5. Rui Zhou, Guanghui Yang, Xuefei Guo, Qiang Zhou, Jianlin Lei, Yigong Shi (2019). Recognition of the amyloid precursor protein by human γ-secretase. Science, 363(6428): eaaw0930.
6. Xiechao Zhan, Chuangye Yan*, Xiaofeng Zhang, Jianlin Lei, Yigong Shi* (2018). Structure of a human catalytic step I spliceosome. Science, 359(6375): 537-545. (*co-corresponding authors)
7. Rui Bai, Ruixue Wan, Chuangye Yan, Jianlin Lei, Yigong Shi (2018). Structures of the fully assembled Saccharomyces cerevisiae spliceosome before activation. Science, 360(6396): 1423-1429.
8. Xiaofeng Zhang, Chuangye Yan*, Jing Hang, Lorenzo I. Finci, Jianlin Lei, Yigong Shi* (2017). An Atomic Structure of the Human Spliceosome. Cell, 169(5): 918-929. (*co-corresponding authors)
9. Chuangye Yan, Jing Hang, Ruixue Wan, Min Huang, Catherine C. L. Wong, Yigong Shi (2015). Structure of a yeast spliceosome at 3.6-angstrom resolution. Science, 349(6253): 1182-1191.
10. Peilong Lu, Xiao-chen Bai, Dan Ma, Tian Xie, Chuangye Yan, Linfeng Sun, Guanghui Yang, Yanyu Zhao, Rui Zhou, Sjors H. W. Scheres* & Yigong Shi* (2014). Three-dimensional structure of human γ-secretase. Nature, 512(7513): 166-170. (*co-corresponding authors)
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