Conversations with scientists

Dr. Hui Yang from the Institute of Neuroscience at Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences and his team have developed new base-editors, which are used for gene-editing. It's a long way to clinical applications. This is a story with and about Hui Yang by Vivien Marx. Episode art: Justin Jackson

Show Notes

Today’s episode is with and about Hui Yang. Dr. Yang is a researcher at the Institute of Neuroscience at Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  He has developed new base-editor variants. Base-editing is a kind of gene-editing. Overall the result led to base-editors with fewer off-targets, high on-target efficiency and a narrowed editing window, fewer indels and  fewer off-targets, he says. Yang sees a lot of promise for these base editors for both DNA and RNA base editing. 

Yang is a die-hard Manchester United. Among other aspects, he talks about how he organizes his lab for open communication. He is modeling the the culture of the Jaenisch lab at The Whitehead Institute. That's where Yang was a postdoctoral fellow. 

What is Conversations with scientists?

Scientists talk about what they do and why they do what they do. Their motivations, their trajectory, their setbacks, their achievements. They offer their personal take on science, mentoring and the many aspects that have shaped their work and their lives. Hosted by journalist Vivien Marx. Her work has appeared in Nature journals, Science, The Economist, The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal Europe and New Scientist among others. (Art: Justin Jackson)