Jane Ying Wu

Jane Ying Wu (Chinese: 吴瑛; 1963 – July 10, 2024) was a Chinese American neuroscientist who was the Charles Louis Mix Professor of Neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Life

Born in 1963 in Hefei, Anhui province. She lived with her grandmother while her parents were in a labor camp. Wu completed her studies at Shanghai Medical University in 1986. She earned a Ph.D. in cancer biology from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1991. Her dissertation was titled, Molecular Studies of Hepatitis B Virus. William S. Robinson [Wikidata] was Wu's doctoral advisor. She dedicated her dissertation to the martyrs of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Wu then conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University.

Wu spent ten years at Washington University in St. Louis, where she served as an assistant and associate professor in pediatrics, molecular biology, and pharmacology. In 2005, she joined Northwestern University where her research concentrated on two closely related biological processes, RNA splicing and the role of regulatory RNA-binding proteins. She led a neurology and genetics laboratory at the Feinberg School of Medicine. By 2007, she was the Charles Louis Mix Professor of Neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The same year, she was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation. In 2009, Wu was invited by the Chinese government to join the Thousand Talents Plan. She managed a laboratory and mentored students at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Her research interests centered on post-transcriptional gene regulation and its involvement in human diseases. She focused on pre-mRNA splicing, a crucial process in eukaryotic gene expression that played a significant role in genetic diversity. Defects in pre-mRNA splicing were linked to the development of numerous human disorders. Wu's research team investigated the mechanisms that regulated pre-mRNA splicing and alternative splicing in genes essential for cell death and neuronal function. They specifically examined how splicing defects contributed to neurodegenerative diseases such as frontotemporal dementia and retinal degeneration. Additionally, Wu explored the fundamental processes involved in tumor development and metastasis. Her discovery of how a neuronal migration signal modulated chemokine activity provided new insights into chemokine regulation, uncovering a conserved mechanism that controlled cell migration across various cell types. Her lab also studied the role of neuronal guidance cues in tumor metastasis and developed new approaches to address inflammatory diseases.

Personal life

Wu met her husband, neurobiologist Rao Yi while attending Shanghai Medical University. She died by suicide on July 10, 2024.