Description:

Di Chen received his Bachelor of Science Degree from Southwest University for Nationalities, China. Supervised by Dr. Zhaohui Wang, Di Chen received his PhD from Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He designed a genome-wide screen in Drosophila to identify germline regulators and discovered a novel RNA-binding protein that coordinates germline cell proliferation and differentiation. Inspired by the CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing in human cells, he decided to explore the specification of germline cell in human and joined Dr. Amander Clark’s laboratory at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) as a postdoctoral researcher.

His research focuses on the human germline cells with the primary goal of understanding how germline cell fate is specified during development. He established an efficient and reliable in vitro differentiation system to induce human germline cells from cultured embryonic stem cells. Combining high-through-put sequencing-based screens, he identified a couple of key transcription factors involved in human germline cell fate specification.