Dr. Z Yan Wang
Assistant Professor University of Washington
Postdoctoral Fellow Princeton University
PhD in Neurobiology University of Chicago
For Dr. Z Yan Wang, a passion for literature preceded – and in some ways, precipitated – her interests in neurobiology. During her first year as an undergraduate at Cornell University, Yan took a transformative course on Asian American literature, taught by Dr. Shelley Wong. It gave her, for the first time, a “vocabulary and a framework and a perspective that put words to the experiences I had growing up in this country” as a young Chinese immigrant. At the same time, it transformed her as a young scholar, instilling an intellectual fascination with literary themes like female reproduction. Although it was science, rather than literature, that ultimately became her primary field of academic pursuit, those themes continue to resonate through her research on reproductive death in octopuses and other end-of-life behavioral changes in invertebrates as a new Assistant Professor at the University of Washington.
The connection from Yan’s literary to biological interests wasn’t immediate. Rather, her first summer of college, she was looking for a job that would allow her to remain on campus and ended up taking a research assistant position in Dr. Jennifer Thaler’s entomology lab. She thus spent a magical summer of field work in Ithaca, New York, studying predator-prey interactions between ladybugs and aphids as well as caterpillars and the plants they ate. She loved it so much that she declared a second major in biology (in addition to English) and sought another research position in the lab of Dr. Ned Place at the veterinary school. Here, she was first able to pursue her literary interests in female reproduction from an experimental angle, studying how the timing of sexual maturation in Siberian hamsters influenced neurogenesis in the hippocampus. Fortuitously, this was also her first foray into neuroscience.
Another transformative course further convinced Yan to pursue an academic path, though whether in English or biology she had yet to decide. This course was titled “Race and the University”, taught again by Dr. Shelley Wong with Dr. Derek Chang, and explored the function of the university through American history and its role in different social projects and movements. While Yan and her fellow classmates engaged in questioning and criticism of the institutions they were part of, she could also see herself finding a fulfilling intellectual and emotional home in an academic environment. Through their exploration of how students and academics in universities had an explosive impact on social movements of the 60’s, Yan came to appreciate how occupying positions of influence within a university could empower her to demand more of those institutions, and consequently have far-reaching impact.
While Yan was considering graduate school in either biology or English, the intimidating GRE subject test in English swayed her towards the former. She decided to go to the University of Chicago to pursue her PhD in neurobiology after a particularly inspiring conversation during her interview. She had quickly hit it off with Dr. Cliff Ragsdale, whose research in octopuses melded beautifully with her own interests in behavior and female reproduction. During her interview, he told her about a phenomenon in octopuses that was well known in the field but whose mechanisms were poorly understood: that after a single episode of mating and reproduction, octopuses die in a truly spectacular fashion. This process involves multiple phases — first, a general withering away and failure to eat as they care for their eggs, followed by rapid and severe physical decline and dramatic behavioral changes, including self-injurious behaviors. This entire process was known to be driven by a part of the cephalopod nervous system called the optic gland, but how it orchestrated this dramatic demise was unclear. It was an enticing research prospect for Yan. She went on to work with Cliff and collaborate with Dr. Caroline Albertin, who was leading the octopus genome project, to look at gene expression in the optic glands of octopuses in different behavioral states (e.g., unmated versus mated and in decline). Yan found that the optic gland was significantly more complex than many had supposed, secreting an impressive array of signaling factors at the end of the mated female octopus’ life, including a number of steroids, neuropeptides and catecholamines.
As much as she enjoyed her PhD research on octopuses, by the time she graduated, Yan wanted to study a different organism with a greater repertoire of social behaviors (the octopus, for all its intelligence and other fascinating features, is an exceptionally solitary creature). She thus joined the lab of Dr. Sarah Kocher at Princeton for her postdoc, transitioning from studying end of life and behavioral decline in octopuses to studying early life influences on social behaviors in bumblebees. Yan found that early-life social isolation resulted in many changes in gene expression and neuroanatomy. Moreover, through sophisticated behavioral manipulation and analysis, she also found that these isolated bees became more social, albeit with some idiosyncrasies. This was in contrast to findings from a number of prior mammalian studies suggesting that isolated individuals become more aggressive. Thus, Yan’s work illuminates far reaching but somewhat more nuanced consequences of early-life social isolation on what she refers to as “social competence” — exhibiting appropriate social behaviors in appropriate social contexts.
As Yan begins her own lab at the University of Washington, she is continuing to work with bumblebees as well as reuniting with her old friend, the octopus. Altogether, she aims to investigate how the nervous system balances different behavioral paradigms and transitions towards the end of life through the lenses of behavioral, evolutionary and comparative neurobiology. She plans to continue the work she began during her PhD on reproductive death in the octopus and expand upon it by studying other cephalopods and even other octopus species that all have optic glands but different end-of-life behavioral programs. In her proposed work with the bumblebee, she plans to shift focus from their early to later lives, when mature colonies shift from being cooperative to competitive at certain times of year.
As she plans her research program, Yan is simultaneously thinking intently about what she learned during that transformative “Race and the University” class and how she will use the very positionality within academia that she first recognized as an undergraduate could have positive impact. As a PI, she believes that how her lab goes about pursuing their questions is just as important as the questions themselves — “I value treating people well and pursuing science with moral clarity”. She recognizes that this will require constant effort to stretch her imagination and creativity to push back against the status quo, which in her own experiences as a trainee she often felt to be exploitative. Moreover, for Yan, being a professor is not just about being a PI. “It also means learning and understanding and exploring this new dimension of interacting with young scholars in creative spaces, including in spaces that I think can be really productive and really generative for having conversations that can lead to cultural change.” In this vein, she is currently developing her own course on “Racism in Neuroscience” that she will debut in the winter, which is heavily inspired by that transformative class she took as well as the social movements of today. Altogether, Yan exemplifies what it means to be a thoughtful, dedicated, and ethical researcher and scholar, and one poised to have far reaching impact.
Find out more about Z Yan and her lab’s research here.
Listen to Megan’s full interview with Z Yan on August 26, 2022 below!
