Tropical Medicine & Surgery

Hongran Wang

Biography

Dr. Hongran Wang focuses his research efforts on germ cell nuclear factor (GCNF), an orphan nuclear receptor function in regulating the pluripotent genes in ES cells, embryonic development and iPS cells. We showed that pluripotent genes like Oct4 have GCNF response element in their promoters that are targets of GCNF, which inhibits these genes in mouse ES cell, human ES cell and iPS cells during differentiation. Losing GCNF leads to the defect in differentiation of ES cells, Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) and defect in the gene expression of three germ lines. GCNF also affect the microRNA expression during the differentiation of ES cell into neural cells and then affect the neural cell maturation and differentiation.

Research Interest

Germ cell nuclear factor (GCNF) Cellular reprogramming