Yi (Eric) Shi, Ph.D
Contact: yishi@scripps.edu
Education:
B.S. Biochemistry - Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. July 1997
Ph.D. Molecular Biology - Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China. May 2007
Current Research Focus:
Seryl-tRNA synthetase (SerRS) plays an essential role in vascular development. This role is independent of the aminoacylation function of SerRS. We found that a unique nucleus-directing domain, added at the invertebrate-to-vertebrate transition, confers a non-translational activity of SerRS in modulating VEGF expression. SerRS controls VEGF expression by counteracting the activity of c-Myc and that vertebrate SerRS and c-Myc is a pair of ‘Yin-Yang’ transcriptional regulator for proper development of a functional vasculature. The non-translational role of SerRS may go beyond vascular development. By using chromatin immunoprecipitation and deep sequencing method, we found that SerRS might directly regulate more than 800 genes which are involved in metabolism, immune, cell cycle regulation, and diseases such as cancer. Our goal is to understand the broad functions of SerRS beyond translation.
Selected Publications:
Shi, Y., Xu, X., Zhang, Q., Fu, G., Mo, Z., Wang, G. S., Kishi, S., and Yang, X.-L. (2014). tRNA synthetase counteracts c-Myc to develop functional vasculature. eLife (Cambridge) 3: e02349.
Xu, X., Shi, Y.*, Zhang, H. M., Swindell, E. C., Marshall, A. G., Guo, M., Kishi, S., and Yang, X.-L. (2012). Unique domain appended to vertebrate tRNA synthetase is essential for vascular development. Nat Commun 3: 681. (*Co-first author).
Xu, X., Shi, Y., and Yang, X.-L. (2013). Crystal structure of human Seryl-tRNA synthetase and Ser-SA complex reveals a molecular lever specific to higher eukaryotes. Structure 21: 2078-2086.
Fu, G., Xu, T., Shi, Y., Wei, N., and Yang, X.-L. (2012). tRNA-controlled nuclear import of a human tRNA synthetase. J Biol Chem 287: 9330-9334.
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