Xuefei Zhang got his B.S. in Biotechnology from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2010, and Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Peking University in 2016. Then he moved to Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital to work with Prof. Frederick W. Alt as a postdoc. He was promoted as an Instructor at Harvard Medical School in 2020. He joined Peking University as a principal investigator in May 2021. He has published several papers at top journals such as Nature and PNAS. He has received several awards including the Harvard Chinese Life Science Annual Distinguished Research Award, Boya Young Fellow, Bayer Investigator Award. He is the principal investigator for several funding from MOST, NSFC and NSFB.

　　Dr. Zhang has been focusing on the mechanism of antibody diversification and maturation during B cell development. The diversification of B cell-generated antibody is from RAG-mediated V(D)J recombination,activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID)-initiated class switch recombination (CSR) and V(D)J exon somatic hypermutation (SHM). While dysregulation of the above recombination/mutation processes severely affect genome stability and human health. Our group uses the combination of gene editing and genomics to systematically study the mechanism of antibody maturation and diversification during B cell development, and the roles of dynamic chromatin structure in maintaining genomic stability, which can also contribute to the understanding of immunological deficiency-related diseases and genome instability-related diseases.

Selected Publications

1. Luo S, Qiao R, Zhang X*. DNA damage response and repair in adaptive immunity. Front Cell Dev Biol. 2022, 10:884873. Invited review.
2. Zhang X*, Yoon HS, Chapdelaine-Williams AM, Kyritsis N, Alt FW*. Physiological role of the 3’IgH CBEs super anchor in antibody class switching.Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2021, 118(3):e2024392118. (* Co-corresponding author) Highlight by: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021, 118(6):e2026399118.
3. Zhang X, Zhang Y, Ba Z, Kyritsis N, Casellas R, Alt FW*. Fundamental roles of chromatin loop extrusion in antibody class switching. Nature. 2019, 575(7782):385-389. Highlight by: Nature. 2019, 575(7782):291-293.
4. Zhang Y#, Zhang X#, Ba Z, Liang Z, Dring EW, Hu H, Lou J, Kyritsis N, Zurita J, Shamim MS, Presser Aiden A, Lieberman Aiden E, Alt FW*. The fundamental role of chromatin loop extrusion in physiological V(D)J recombination. Nature. 2019 573(7775):600-604. (# Co-first author) (Highlight by: Nature. 2019, 575(7782):291-293).
5. Panchakshari RA#, Zhang X#, Kumar V, Du Z, Wei PC, Kao J, Dong J*, Alt FW*. DNA double-strand break response factors influence end-joining features of IgH class switch and general translocation. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2018, 115(4):762-767. (# Co-first author)