Siyuan (Steven) Wang received a B. S. in Physics from Peking University in 2007, a Ph. D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University in 2011, and his postdoctoral training at Harvard University. He currently serves as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics and the Department of Cell Biology, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University (started in September, 2017).

Wang’s research interest is to understand the spatiotemporal complexity of molecular and cellular systems, and how the complexity affects biological functions. These are among the most important topics in the field of Cell Biology. A cell cannot be simplified as a static, homogeneous mixture of bio-molecules. Seemingly equivalent cells in a tissue may also vary in the composition and organization of bio-molecules. Understanding the spatiotemporal complexity within and among cells can unveil how nanometer-scale molecules give rise to micron-scale cellular structures and behaviors, can elucidate how cell-cell variations develop and contribute to physiological and pathological conditions in tissues, and can lead to novel diagnostic and treatment strategies. More often than not, new technological advances are in high demand to generate these insights.

During his postdoctoral study at Harvard University, Wang aimed to understand the spatial organization of mammalian chromatin. The spatial organization of chromatin in the nucleus is of critical importance to many essential genomic functions, from the regulation of gene expression to the replication of the genome. Unfortunately, relatively little is known about the three-dimensional (3D) organization of chromatin beyond the length scale of the nucleosomes, in large part due to the lack of tools that allow direct visualization and comprehensive mapping of the 3D organization of chromatin in individual chromosomes. To address this need, his main postdoctoral work (published in Science, 2016) involved the development of a multiplexed DNA imaging method, via sequential fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). This novel method enabled direct spatial tracing of numerous genomic regions in individual chromosomes in single cells, offering a powerful tool to study the 3D organization of chromatin. As the first application of this method, he studied the spatial organization of the recently discovered topologically associating domains (TADs), also termed contact domains, by tracing the 3D positions of TADs in individual chromosomes in interphase human cells, and revealed a series of unexpected structural features. This work opened up many opportunities to study the spatial organization of chromatin at different length scales in a variety of important biological processes and in diseases. He also co-developed a highly-multiplexed RNA FISH technique that enabled localized detection and quantification of 1000 different RNA species in a single cell (published in Science, 2015). In comparison to single-cell RNA sequencing, this multiplexed FISH method easily retains the spatial information of all the probed transcripts, and is highly sensitive for counting low-copy-number transcripts. Additionally, he led the development of a new photoactivatable fluorescent protein (PAFP), named mMaple3 (published in PNAS, 2014), that outperforms previously existing PAFPs in single-molecule-based superresolution imaging (STORM/PALM) and has been adopted by more than 100 research labs around the world. This work also established the criteria for evaluating novel PAFPs for single-molecule-based superresolution imaging. His postdoctoral research was supported by a Jane Coffin Childs Fellowship, and was awarded with the 2016 International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Young Scientist Prize in Biological Physics (one recipient per year worldwide), and the 2017 Harvard Chinese Life Sciences Distinguished Research Award.

As a graduate student at Princeton University, Wang studied bacterial cell mechanics, especially how the bacterial cytoskeleton coordinates cell wall synthesis. The first project in his dissertation (published in PNAS, 2010) showed that the bacterial actin homologue MreB contributes nearly as much to the rigidity of an E. coli cell as the peptidoglycan cell wall. This conclusion provided the premise for several theoretical works that assumed MreB applies force to the cell wall during growth, and suggested an evolutionary origin of cytoskeleton-governed cell rigidity. His second project (published in PNAS, 2011) dealt with the discovery of the motion of E. coli MreB linked to cell wall synthesis. This was the first observation of a cell-wall assembly driven molecular motor in bacteria. (Simultaneously with the work, Garner et al and Dominguez-Escobar et al discovered the same phenomenon in B. subtilis.) His third project (published in PNAS, 2012) elucidated that both cell wall synthesis and the peptidoglycan network have a chiral ordering, which is established by MreB. This work linked the molecular structures of the cytoskeleton and of the cell wall with organismal-scale behavior. His fourth project (published in Biophysical Journal, 2013) developed a generic, quantitative model to explain the various spatial patterns adopted by bacterial cytoskeletal proteins. The model set up a new theoretical framework for the study of membrane-polymer interaction, and is useful for the exploration of the physical limits of cytoskeleton organization. His dissertation won the 2011 American Physical Society Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Biological Physics (one recipient per year in the United States).