Investigators


Feng XU

 
xu_feng@sics.a-star.edu.sg

Growth, Development and Metabolism Programme
Principal Investigator

Obesity and its related diseases such as diabetes increasingly are responsible for significant economic and social burdens in established and emerging countries. For instance, diabetes alone, is affecting more than 170 million people worldwide. As such, understanding the molecular mechanism that controls adipose (fat) cell differentiation would greatly enhance our ability to solve these problems. Adipogenesis is a complex physiological process that requires concerted regulation of gene expression by various adipogenic factors. Among these regulators are many histone modifying enzymes and chromatin remodelers, suggesting that epigenetic mechanisms play essential roles in modulating adipogenesis. In addition to histone modifications, microRNA represents another major group of epigenetic regulators involved in diverse physiological processes including adipogenesis. Our current research centers on the function of histone modifications and microRNAs in white adipocyte differentiation. And we are extending our research to the epigenetic control of brown adipocyte differentiation as well as lineage commitment from multipotent stem cells. To fully decipher the epigenetic mechanisms controlling adipogenesis and lineage commitment, we utilize the advanced genomic and proteomic methodologies as well as classic biochemistry and molecular biology techniques in our study. Besides our basic research into the molecular mechanism of adipogenesis, we are also interested in identifying potential drug targets to treat obesity and metabolic diseases such as diabetes.
  1. Role of histone modification in fat cell differentiation.
  2. Role of microRNA in fat cell differentiation.

Sun, W., Xie, W., Xu, F., Grunstein, M. and Li, K.C. (2009) Dissecting nucleosome free regions by a segmental semi-Markov model. PLoS One. 4(3):e4721.

Xie, W., Song, C., Young, N.L., Sperling, A.S., Xu, F., Sridharan, R., Conway, A.E., Garcia, B.A., Plath, K., Clark, A.T. and Grunstein, M. (2009) Histone H3 lysine 56 acetylation is linked to the core transcriptional network in human embryonic stem cells. Molecular Cell. 33, 417-427.

Xu, F., Zhang, Q.Y., Zhang, K.L., Xie, W. and Grunstein, M. (2007) Sir2 Deacetylates Histone H3 Lysine 56 to Regulate Telomeric Heterochromatin Structure in Yeast. Molecular Cell.. 27, 890-900.

Millar, C.B., Xu, F., Zhang, K.L. and Grunstein, M. (2006) Acetylation of H2AZ Lys 14 is associated with genome-wide gene activity in yeast. Genes & Development. 20 (6), 711-722.

Xu, F., Zhang, K.L. and Grunstein, M. (2005) Acetylation in Histone H3 Globular Domain Regulates Gene Expression in Yeast. Cell. 121,375-385.

Yu, Y., Liu, Y., Shen, N., Xu, X., Xu, F., Jia, J., Jin, Y., Arnold, E. and Ding, J. (2004) Crystal structure of human tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase catalytic fragment: insights into substrate recognition, tRNA binding, and angiogenesis activity. J Biol Chem. 279(9), 8378-8388.

Wang, Z.C., Wang, X.M., Jin, Y.X., Jiao, B.H., Xu, F., Miao, M.Y. and Zhu, K.J. Search for difference in aminoacylation of mitochondrial DNA-encoded wild-type and mutant human tRNALeu (UUR). (2003) IUBMB Life. 55(3), 139-144.

Xu, F., Jiang, G., Li, W., He, X., Jin, Y.X. and Wang, D. (2002) Three G.C base pairs required for the efficient aminoacylation of tRNATrp by tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase from Bacillus subtilis. Biochemistry. 41(25), 8087-8092.

Jia, J., Xu, F., Chen, X., Chen, L., Jin, Y.X. and Wang, D.B. (2002) Two essential regions for tRNA recognition in Bacillus subtilis tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase. Biochem J. 365(Pt 3), 749-756.

Xu, F., Chen, X.L., Xin, L., Chen, L., Jin, Y.X. and Wang, D.B. (2001) Species-Specific Differences in the Operational RNA Code for Aminoacylation of tRNATrp. Nucleic Acids Res. 29, 4125-4133.

Xu, F., Jia, J., Jin, Y.X. and Wang, D.B. (2001) High-Level expression and single-step purification of human tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase. Protein Express. Purif. 23, 296-300.

Xu, R.H., Liu, J., Chen, X.W., Xu, F., Xie, Q., Yu, H., Guo, Q., Zhou, X.Q. and Jin, Y.X. (2001) Ribozyme-mediated Inhibition of Caspase-3 Activity Reduces Apoptosis Induced by 6-Hydroxydopamine in PC12 Cells. Brain Research. 899,10-19.


Sophie Julien
Senior Research Fellow

Reinhard Brunmeir
Research Fellow

Sunyee Kim
Research Fellow

Hongyan Yan
Research Fellow

Raymond Ng
Research Fellow

Sim Choon Kiat
Research Fellow

Xu Peng
Senior Research Officer

Qiongyi Zhang
Senior Research Officer

Joanna Rajeswary Sinnakannu
Research Officer

Muhammad Idris
Research Officer