Tao Yu

Associate Director of RNA Center

PhD

 

 

Summary

Tao received his BS in Systems Biology from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He completed his undergraduate thesis with Dr. Jingdong Han in MPG-CAS-PICB in Shanghai, working on high throughput RNAi screen of age-related genes (knockdown of which was previously shown to either extend or shorten lifespan) on age-related pathways (using transgenic worms carrying reporters of known age-related pathways). Tao then completed his Ph.D. in National University of Singapore (NUS), where he worked with Dr. Jonathan Loh to study the maintenance of pluripotency and regulation of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) in embryonic stem cells. His Ph.D. thesis illustrates how a post-translational modification, sumoylation, could control the stability of Trim28 and in turn regulates the repressive epigentic marks on ERVs. He also proposed a novel model that poly-sumoylation could potentially perform as a scaffold to initiate Trim28’s interaction with transcription factors that have multiple SUMO binding motifs.

After his Ph.D., Tao first joined the Yeo Lab at NUS in 2018 and later moved to the Yeo Lab at UCSD in 2021. He is currently interested in identifying novel regulators of circular RNAs and explore the scaffold-like properties of RNA and RNA binding proteins.

Since his time as a PostDoctoral Fellow in the Yeo Lab, Tao has become the Associate Director of the RNA Center.

 

Education

Ph.D. in Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 2017

BSc in Systems Biology, University of Science and Technology of China, 2012

 

Contact

tayu@health.ucsd.edu

Publications

  • Yu T., Scolnick J. A. Complex biological questions being addressed using single cell sequencing technologies. SLAS Technology (Review, Accepted)

  • Pradeep G., Yu T., Loh Y. H. Regulation of ERVs in pluripotent stem cells and reprogramming. Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 2017

  • Yang B. X., El Farran C. A., Guo H. C., Yu T., Fang H. T., Wang H. F., Schlesinger S., Seah Y. F., Goh G. Y., Neo S. P., Li Y., Lorincz M. C., Tergaonkar V., Lim T. M., Chen L., Gunaratne J., Collins J. J., Goff S. P., Daley G. Q., Li H., Bard F. A., Loh Y. H. Systematic identification of factors for provirus silencing in embryonic stem cells. Cell. 2015 *As co-first author

  • Xian B., Shen J., Chen W. Y., Sun N., Qian N., Jiang D., Yu T., Men Y., Han Z., Pang Y., Kaeberlein M., Huang Y., Han J. D. WormFarm: a quantitative control and measurement device toward automated Caenorhabditis elegans aging analysis. Ageing Cell. 2013

  • Schleit J., Johnson S. C., Bennett C. F., Simko M., Trongtham N., Castanza A., Hsieh E. J., Moller R. M., Wasko B. M., Delaney J. R., Sutphin G. L., Carr D., Murakami C. J., Tocchi A., Xian B., Chen W., Yu T., Goswami S., Higgins S., Holmberg M., Jeong K. S., Kim J. R., Klum S., Liao E., Lin M. S., Lo W., Miller H., Olsen B., Peng Z. J., Pollard T., Pradeep P., Pruett D., Rai D., Ros V., Singh M., Spector B. L., Vander Wende H., An E. H., Fletcher M., Jelic M., Rabinovitch P. S., MacCoss M. J., Han J. D., Kennedy B. K., Kaeberlein M. Molecular mechanisms underlying genotype-dependent responses to dietary restriction. Aging Cell. 2013