Mu-ming Poo

Mu-ming Poo (Chinese: 蒲慕明; born October 31, 1948) is a Chinese-Taiwanese-American neuroscientist. He is the Paul Licht Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley and the Founding Director of the Shanghai-based Institute of Neuroscience (ION) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the 2016 Gruber Prize in Neuroscience for his pioneering work on synaptic plasticity. At ION, Poo led a team of scientists that produced the world's first truly cloned primates, a pair of crab-eating macaques called Zhongzhong and Huahua in 2017, using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).

The native form of this personal name is Pu Muming. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
Mu-ming Poo
Chinese: 蒲慕明 (Poo Mu-ming)
Born (1948-10-31) October 31, 1948
Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
Other namesPu Mu-ming, Muming Pu
CitizenshipChina (United States until 2017)
Alma materNational Tsing Hua University,
Johns Hopkins University
Known forPioneering work on synaptic plasticity, first true cloning of primates
Spouse(s)Wen-jen Hwu (divorced)
Yang Dan
ChildrenAi-jen Poo and Ting Poo
AwardsGruber Prize in Neuroscience (2016)
Scientific career
FieldsNeuroscience
InstitutionsInstitute of Neuroscience (ION) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,
University of California, Berkeley

Early life

Poo was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China on October 31, 1948.[1] When he was one, his family moved to Taiwan because of the Chinese Communist Revolution. Influenced by his father, an aeronautical engineer, he was interested in physics from a young age. He attended National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, graduating with a degree in physics in 1970.[2]

Career in the US

In 1970, he went to the United States to pursue graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, where he became interested in biophysics. Under the guidance of Richard Cone, he developed the now widely used method to determine the kinetics of diffusion through cells, fluorescence recovery after photobleaching. His research was published in the major journal Nature in 1974.[2] After earning his PhD, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue University, and became an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine in 1976. He developed a new method to manipulate proteins in cell membranes called "in situ electrophoresis".[2]

In 1985, he moved to the Yale School of Medicine to conduct research in proteins and synapses. Later he became a professor at Columbia University and then at the University of California, San Diego in 1996. During this period he made significant discoveries in molecular neurobiology that developed into a new study area on neurotrophins. Poo and his colleagues also invented a new method called the "growth cone turning assay", now widely in neuroscience for measuring axon growth in reaction to proteins.[2]

He moved to the University of California, Berkeley in 2000, where he later became Paul Licht Distinguished Professor in Biology. At Berkeley, he made many new discoveries in understanding the factors that determine the development of axons and dendrites in neurons.[2] He also made important discoveries in synaptic plasticity, demonstrating that spike-timing-dependent plasticity plays a crucial role in neuron connections.[2]

Career in China

In 1999, Poo co-founded the Shanghai-based Institute of Neuroscience (ION) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences[2] and served as its director.[3] For the following decade, he commuted frequently between Berkeley and Shanghai, until the constant traveling took a toll and he decided to focus on his work in Shanghai. He is now a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley.[2] In 2017, he gave up his American citizenship, which he had acquired in the 1980s, and obtained his Chinese citizenship.[4]

At ION, Poo led a team of Chinese scientists that produced the world's first truly cloned primates, a pair of crab-eating macaques called Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua in late 2017, using somatic cell nuclear transfer (the technique used to create Dolly the sheep) rather than embryo twinning.[5] According to Poo, the principal significance of this event is that it could be used to create genetically identical monkeys for use in animal experiments. Crab-eating macaques are already an established model organism for studies of atherosclerosis,[6] though Poo chose to emphasize neuroscience, naming Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease when he appeared on the radio news program All Things Considered in January 2018.[7]

Poo compares his career to a "random walk": "When I bump into an interesting problem, I work on it for as long as I can contribute. Then I move on."[2]

Honors and awards

Poo is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Academia Sinica of Taiwan, and the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences.[2] In 2016, he was awarded the $500,000 Gruber Prize in Neuroscience for his "pioneering and inspiring work on synaptic plasticity".[3]

He is also the recipient of the following awards:[8]

Personal life

Poo married a fellow Taiwanese immigrant to the US, chemist and oncologist Wen-jen Hwu, and they later divorced. They have two daughters: Ting and Ai-jen. Ai-jen Poo (born 1974) is a social activist and writer who won the MacArthur "Genius" Award in 2014.[9] Ting Poo is a filmmaker who was the editor of Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) in 2017.[4]

Poo married again, to Yang Dan,[10] his former student at Columbia University. Dan is also a distinguished neuroscientist who was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2018.[11]

References
  1. "Curriculum Vitae of Mu-ming Poo". University of California Berkeley. Archived from the original on 22 October 2016. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  2. "2016 Neuroscience Prize: Mu-Ming Poo". Gruber Foundation, Yale University. 2016. Archived from the original on 25 February 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  3. "Neuroscientist Mu-ming Poo Receives $500,000 Gruber Neuroscience Prize for His Pioneering and Inspiring Work on Synaptic Plasticity". Chinese Academy of Sciences. 8 June 2016. Archived from the original on 8 February 2018. Retrieved 8 February 2018.
  4. "中科院第一位外籍所长蒲慕明恢复中国国籍". Netease. June 27, 2018. Retrieved July 4, 2018.
  5. Normile, Dennis (24 January 2018). "These monkey twins are the first primate clones made by the method that developed Dolly". Science. Archived from the original on 27 January 2018. Retrieved 9 February 2018.
  6. Kimberley A. Phillips, Karen L. Bales, John P. Capitanio, Alan Conley, Paul W. Czoty, Bert A. ‘t Hart, William D. Hopkins, Shiu-Lok Hu, Lisa A. Miller, Michael A. Nader, Peter W. Nathanielsz, Jeffrey Rogers, Carol A. Shively, and Mary Lou Voytko (10 April 2014). "Why Primate Models Matter". American Journal of Primatology. 76 (9): 801–827. doi:10.1002/ajp.22281. PMC 4145602. PMID 24723482.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. "Mu-ming Poo". World Economic Forum. Archived from the original on 9 February 2018. Retrieved 9 February 2018.
  9. Snodgrass, Mary Ellen (24 October 2016). American Women Speak: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection of Women's Oratory. ABC-CLIO. pp. 572–4. ISBN 978-1-4408-3785-2. Archived from the original on 14 February 2018.
  10. Xu Shengjin 徐圣进. "无私奉献 甘为幕后". Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on May 2, 2018. Retrieved October 16, 2018.
  11. "Yang Dan, PhD Columbia 1994, elected to the National Academy of Sciences". Columbia University. May 14, 2018. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
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