Juntao Yu, Ph.D.

I am a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Yukiko Yamashita’s laboratory at Whitehead Institute and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). I am interested in understanding chromatin-based mechanisms underlying cell fate decisions and genome maintenance for germline immortality.

I received my Ph.D. degree from Harvard University under the mentorship of Dr. Danesh Moazed. My Ph.D. thesis uncovered a new mechanism of replisome-mediated parental histone inheritance during DNA replication for epigenetic inheritance of heterochromatin. 

Before Harvard, I obtained my B.S. in Biology with honor from the University of Science and Technology of China. As an undergraduate research student in Dr. Bing Ren’s Lab at the University of California, San Diego, I contributed to a study to identify distal cis-regulatory elements for transcriptional activation of pluripotency gene OCT4 in human embryonic stem cells.

My research will continue to focus on i) uncovering chromatin-based mechanisms that govern cell fate decisions, developmental programs and genome maintenance and ii) identifying conserved principles by which biological systems store and propagate memory across different molecular and cellular contexts. As a scientist, I strongly believe in and am committed to mentoring next-generation scientists and empowering them to contribute creatively and rigorously to the future of life sciences in the best version of themselves.

Contact

Juntao Yu, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Yamashita Lab

Whitehead Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)

455 Main Street, 

Cambridge, MA 02142

Email: juntao.yu AT wi.mit.edu