Xue Tian

Professor, University of Science and Technology of China

Xue’s research interests include:

1. The mechanisms of light perception and relevant signal transduction in living organisms, particularly the light signal transduction mechanisms in intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs).

2. Light-regulated physiological functions in living organisms and non-imaging visual neural circuits, such as the neural circuit structure and functions underlying the phenotype of abnormal nighttime light-induced depression-like symptoms.

3. The applications of gene editing, stem cell technologies and new nanomaterials in the treatment of retinal photoreceptor degenerative diseases using large animal models. He combined visual neurobiomedicine with nanotechnology to achieve mammalian naked-eye infrared image vision for the first time and used in vivo homologous recombination gene editing technology to rescue photoreceptor degeneration in a mouse model with an inherited visual disease. Xue also deciphered the molecular atlas of retinal aging in human and macaque retina and established the first non-human primate model for retinitis pigmentosa.