Xiang-Lei Yang

Xiang-Lei Yang, PhD, is the Ernest W. Hahn Endowed Chair and a professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research. Her lab pioneers the field of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases regarding their broad regulatory functions in higher organisms and in the context of human diseases, including neuromuscular diseases and cancers.

The Yang lab uncovered diverse non-enzymatic functions of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases that regulate the vasculature, stress responses, and proteostasis, and demonstrated their pathophysiological significance. Her lab also deployed state-of-the art structural biology to elucidate the molecular basis of these functions and of their disease-causing dysregulations. Furthermore, Prof. Yang’s work showed that the tRNA synthetase function is sensitive to the environment and can connect the environmental change to gene expression regulation, thus playing a key role in maintaining cellular homeostasis.

Beyond these discoveries, her lab has also expanded our understanding of tRNAs themselves, which are co-deployed in some of these mechanisms.

Dr. Yang is the author or co-author of more than 98 scientific publications and 8 issued or published patents. She has given numerous invited lectures at international conferences, universities, and pharmaceutical companies. She founded the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on "Translation Machinery in Health and Disease”, the first disease-focused conference for the broad field of mRNA translation. She is a scientific co-founder aTyr Pharma, which is aimed at developing tRNA synthetase-related molecules as therapeutic biologics.

Dr. Yang received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering at Capital Institute of Medical Science (Beijing), and her Ph.D. in Biophysics and Computational Biology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.