Chuan He

In 2010, He proposed that RNA modifications could be reversible and may have regulatory roles analogous to well-known reversible DNA and protein modifications. He and colleagues subsequently discovered the first RNA demethylase that oxidatively reverses N6-methyladenosine (mA) methylation in mammalian messenger RNA (mRNA) in 2011. The existence of mA in mRNA was discovered in 1974 in both eukaryotic and viral mRNAs; however, the biological significance and functional role were not known before He’s work. This methylation is the most abundant internal modification in mammalian mRNA. In 2012, two independent studies reported transcriptome-wide mapping of mA in mammalian cells and tissues, revealing a unique distribution pattern. He and co-workers identified and characterized the direct reader proteins for mA, which impact the stability and the translation efficiency of mA-modified mRNA, elucidating functional roles of mRNA methylation. His group also purified the methyltransferase complex that mediates this methylation.

He graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1994 with a B.S. in Chemistry. After his Ph.D. training with Stephen J. Lippard at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he worked under Gregory L. Verdine as a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. He became a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago in 2002.