- Associate Professor, Department of Genetics, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University
Dr. Jun Lu is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Vice Chair for Collaborative Excellence in the Department of Genetics at Yale School of Medicine. He received his PhD from Boston University and completed postdoctoral training at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is a Stewart Trust Fellow and Forbeck Scholar.
Dr. Lu’s laboratory uses the blood-forming system — hematopoiesis — as a model to study noncoding and epigenetic controls of cell fate and behavior. A major focus of his research is a newly discovered class of noncoding RNAs presented on the outer cell surface with glycosylation modifications, known as glycoRNAs. His lab recently revealed the first known function of these glycoRNAs in neutrophil biology, demonstrating that cell surface RNAs control neutrophil recruitment. Additional research directions include understanding the mechanisms governing neutrophil nuclear morphology during differentiation, and investigating general principles of cancer and tumor-immune cell crosstalk.
Dr. Lu’s work spans RNA biology, epigenetics, cancer immunology, and genomics, with publications in leading journals including Cell, Immunity, Nature Communications, and Genome Research. His laboratory is affiliated with the Yale Cancer Center, Yale Stem Cell Center, and the Center for RNA Science and Medicine.