People

Principal investigator

Photo	Name
	Lei Wang Professor [email protected] Lei Wang’s CV Lei Wang received BS and MS from Peking University mentored by Zhongfan Liu, and PhD from UC Berkeley mentored by Peter G. Schultz. His graduate research resulted in the first expansion of the genetic code to include unnatural amino acids (Uaas) in 2001, for which he was awarded the Young Scientist Award by the journal Science. After postdoctoral training with Roger Y. Tsien, Wang started his group at the Salk Institute in 2005, and moved to UCSF in 2014. Wang’s group has developed new methods for the expansion of the genetic code in a variety of cells and model organisms, including mammalian cells, stem cells, C. elegans, and embryonic mouse. His group discovered that release factor one (RF1) is nonessential in E. coli, and engineered autonomous bacteria capable of incorporating Uaas at multiple sites with high efficiency. By developing the concept of proximity-enabled bioreactivity, Wang’s group designed and demonstrated that a new class of Uaas, the latent bioreactive Uaas, can be genetically encoded in live systems. These latent bioreactive Uaas enable novel covalent bonding abilities to be specifically introduced into proteins and biosystems, opening new avenues for in vivo protein engineering, biological research, and biotherapeutics. Wang is a recipient of 2003 Merck Fellow of Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, 2003 Young Scientist Award by Science, 2004 TR35 Top Young Innovator by MIT Technology Review, 2006 Beckman Young Investigator, 2006 Searle Scholar, 2008 Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar by March of Dimes, 2008 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the 2021 Emil Thomas Kaiser Award by the Protein Society, and 2024 NIH Director's WALS Lecture.

Photo

Name

Lei Wang
Professor
[email protected]
Lei Wang’s CV

Lei Wang received BS and MS from Peking University mentored by Zhongfan Liu, and PhD from UC Berkeley mentored by Peter G. Schultz. His graduate research resulted in the first expansion of the genetic code to include unnatural amino acids (Uaas) in 2001, for which he was awarded the Young Scientist Award by the journal Science. After postdoctoral training with Roger Y. Tsien, Wang started his group at the Salk Institute in 2005, and moved to UCSF in 2014. Wang’s group has developed new methods for the expansion of the genetic code in a variety of cells and model organisms, including mammalian cells, stem cells, C. elegans, and embryonic mouse. His group discovered that release factor one (RF1) is nonessential in E. coli, and engineered autonomous bacteria capable of incorporating Uaas at multiple sites with high efficiency. By developing the concept of proximity-enabled bioreactivity, Wang’s group designed and demonstrated that a new class of Uaas, the latent bioreactive Uaas, can be genetically encoded in live systems. These latent bioreactive Uaas enable novel covalent bonding abilities to be specifically introduced into proteins and biosystems, opening new avenues for in vivo protein engineering, biological research, and biotherapeutics. Wang is a recipient of 2003 Merck Fellow of Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, 2003 Young Scientist Award by Science, 2004 TR35 Top Young Innovator by MIT Technology Review, 2006 Beckman Young Investigator, 2006 Searle Scholar, 2008 Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar by March of Dimes, 2008 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the 2021 Emil Thomas Kaiser Award by the Protein Society, and 2024 NIH Director's WALS Lecture.

Postdoctoral fellows

Photo	Name, email	Degree
	Li Cao [email protected]	PhD, Nankai University
	Shanshan Li [email protected]	PhD, Georgia State University
	Wei Sun [email protected]	PhD, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine
	Bingchen Yu [email protected]	PhD, Georgia State University

Graduate students

Photo	Name, graduate program, email	Degree
	Viktoriya Berdan Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB) [email protected]	BS, New York University
	Paul Klauser Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB) [email protected]	BS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign