Biography

Dr. Miao Yu is a Professor of Cell Biology at the College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, and serves as the principal investigator at the Taikang Life Sciences Center. She obtained her Bachelor's degree in Acoustics from Nanjing University and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. In 2019, she was honored with a Humboldt Fellowship by the Humboldt Foundation in Germany, followed by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship from the European Research Council in 2020. In 2023, she was selected for the National Overseas High-level Talent Program and the High-level Talent Program of Hubei Province. Professor Miao Yu has dedicated her career to cell biology and biophysics, making significant original contributions to unraveling the real-time dynamics and functional mechanisms of intrinsically disordered proteins in live cells. She has authored over 20 papers, including eight published in renowned journals such as Nature, PNAS, and Molecular Cell as the first (or co-first) author.

Research

Our research team is dedicated to exploring the dynamic processes and mechanisms of biomacromolecules in living cells, with a particular focus on intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and their dynamics and functions. IDPs play crucial roles in various biological processes, including neurodegenerative diseases, gene regulation, signal transduction, and viral infection, constituting over 40% of the proteome in higher organisms. Unlike folded proteins, IDPs exhibit high spatiotemporal heterogeneity, making it challenging for traditional biophysical techniques to decipher their conformational dynamics and functional roles in live cells. Hence, IDPs are often referred to as the 'dark matter' of living cells. To address this challenge, our research team is systematically developing innovative interdisciplinary biotechnologies, including single-molecule spectroscopy, advanced fluorescence microscopy, genetic code expansion, and microfluidic devices. Leveraging these advanced tools, we aim to unveil the real-time dynamic processes of IDPs in live cells. Our research not only holds the promise of providing new biomedical strategies for treating neurodegenerative diseases but also opens new perspectives for understanding the dynamic conformations and molecular mechanisms of IDPs in various biological processes.

Representative  Publications

• Yu M.,^# Heidari M.,^# Mikhaleva S.,^# Tan P.S.,^# Mingu S., Ruan H., Reinkermeier C.D., A. Obarska-Kosinska, Siggel M., Beck M., Hummer G.,^* Lemke E.A.^* Visualising the Disordered Nuclear Transport Machinery in situ. Nature 617, 162-169, 2023.

• Scheidt T.,^# Ruan H.,^# Yu M.,^# Lemke E.A.^* Stressing the Role of a Short Linear Motif in Ataxin-2 Condensation. Molecular Cell 83 (12), 1961-1963, 2023.

• Yu M., Lemke E.A.^* There is Plenty of Room in Protein-RNA Condensates. Biophysical Journal. 6, 120 (7):1121-1122, 2021.

• Chowdhury A.,^# Yu M.,^# Lemke E.A.^* Phase Separation Comes of Age: From Phenomenology to Single Molecules. Molecular Cell 74 (3), 413-415, 2019.

• Li W.,^# Yu M.,^# Sun J.,^# Mochizuki K., Chen S., Zheng H., Li J., Yao S., Wu H., Ong B., Kawata S., Wang Z.,^* Ren K.^* Crack Engineering for The Construction of Arbitrary Hierarchical Architectures. PNAS 16 (48), 23909–23914, 2019.

• Hou Y.,^# Yu M.,^# Shang Y., Zhou P., Song R., Xu X., Chen X., Wang Z., Yao S.^* Suppressing Ice Nucleation of Supercooled Condensate with Biphilic Topography. Physical Review Letters 120 (7), 075902, 2018. (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.075902)

• Yu M.,^# Hou Y.,^# Song R., Xu X., Yao S.^* Tunable Confinement for Bridging Single-cell Manipulation and Single-molecule DNA Linearization. Small 14, 1800229, 2018.

• Yu M., Hou Y., Zhou H., Yao S.^* An On-demand Nanofluidic Concentrator. Lab on a Chip, 15 (6), 1524-1532, 2015.