Danfeng Cai, Ph.D.

Principle Investigator

Dr. Danfeng Cai is interested in how physical and chemical signals dictate cellular functions. She obtained her B.S. from Peking University, and later her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine under the mentorship of Dr. Denise Montell, where she used live-cell imaging to study how mechanical force regulates directional migration of cell clusters [1, 2]. Her Ph.D. work was awarded the Bae Gyo Jung Award by Johns Hopkins University. At 2014, she became a Damon Runyon cancer research fellow with Dr. Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz at National Institutes of Health. She later moved to the mecca of advanced imaging: Howard Hughes Medical Institute -Janelia Research Campus to study how chromatin organization and transcription can be influenced by biomolecular condensates, jointly mentored by Drs. Zhe Liu and Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz. In 2021, Dr. Cai established her lab at BMB Department of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, using advanced imaging techniques to study how cells remodel their regulatory DNA landscape to turn on transcription [3].

References:

1. Cai, D. et al. Mechanical feedback through E-cadherin promotes direction sensing during collective cell migration. Cell 157, 1146-1159, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2014.03.045 (2014).

2. Cai, D. et al. Modeling and analysis of collective cell migration in an in vivo three-dimensional environment. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 113, E2134-2141, doi:10.1073/pnas.1522656113 (2016).

3. Cai, D. et al. Phase separation of YAP reorganizes genome topology for long-term YAP target gene expression. Nature Cell Biology 21, 1578-1589, doi:10.1038/s41556-019-0433-z (2019).

Honors and Awards

·     The Lorraine Flaherty Award, International Mammalian Genome Society

·     Forbeck Scholar Award, William Forbeck Research Foundation

·     Fellows Award for Research Excellence, National Institute of Health

·     Damon Runyon-Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientists, Finalist

·     Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellowship

·     Bae Gyo Jung Award, Johns Hopkins University