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Wright Lab

Yu-Ping Yang, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Cell & Developmental Biology

Better identification of pancreatic multipotent progenitor cells, and determination of how they transition to endocrine-biased progenitors will improve in vitro ES cell differentiation protocols, and are therefore of high relevance to the therapeutic control of beta cell regeneration.  As a nexus for gene regulatory networks controlling progenitors and beta cell differentiation, Pdx1’s spatiotemporal expression lead to context-dependent interpretations by different progenitors.  My research focuses on the in vivo dissection of Pdx1 function, including (1) Requirement and sufficiency of Pdx1 in multipoent and endocrine-biased progenitor cells, and (2) Roles and epigenetic dissection of cis-regulation of Pdx1 via conserved mammal-specific Area II.