Ming Guo, MD, PhD
Principle Investigator (Current CV)
Ming Guo is an Associate Professor in Neurology, and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), David Geffen School of Medicine. She is affiliated with the Brain Research Institute, Molecular Biology Institute and Neurogenetics Program. She is also a faculty in various graduate programs including Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, ACCESS, Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, Molecular Biology Interdepartmental Program and Physiology Interdepartmental Program.
Dr. Guo is both a physician and a scientist. As a Board Certified Neurologist trained at UCLA, she currently spends 20% of her time caring for patients with neurological diseases. She sees patients in clinic with difficult and mysterious disorders, most of which are neurodegenerative diseases. Many of her patients seek care at UCLA because they are frustrated with being unable to obtain a clear diagnosis after seeing several doctors. Many of her patients come from California, Nevada, Oregan and Washington, as well as from abroad including China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia. In addition, she is an Attending Physician and attends inpatient General Neurology Service at the UCLA Medical Center and the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. Motivated by her desire to help patients with devastating neurodegenerative diseases, which frequently lack effective therapy, Dr. Guo is devoted to understand fundamental mechanisms leading to these diseases and to translate the findings to human studies.
The Guo lab utilizes Drosophila melanogaster (fruitflies) for carrying out disease-related research. Drosophila has several distinct advantages as a research model system. Drosophila has a short life cycle (10 days from mating to the emergence of baby flies), a century-long accumulation of genetic tools (since Thomas Morgan in the early 1900s) and limited genetic redundancy. Thus, Drosophila has been used to study many processes including basic genetic mechanisms, development (Nobel Prize awarded to three scientists), cancer, sleep, circadian rhythm, alcohol and drug addition, innate immunity, noxiception, wound healing and pesticide resistance. With respect to disease research, following identification of many disease genes by human genetic studies, it is important to understand the normal function of the gene, how mutations of the gene cause disease and to identify new genes involved in the same pathway. Drosophila is particularly suited for these studies. 75% of the human disease genes have Drosophila homologs and the gene functions and biological pathways are largely conserved from flies to humans. As a genetic tractable organism, flies allow one to study gene function in vivo and to identify new mutation in unbiased forward genetic screens. In addition, some drug studies pioneered in Drosophila have moved into human clinical trials.
Over the years, Dr. Guo has been invited to give seminars/talks at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Caltech, UCSF, Baylor College of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, University of Southern California, Duke University, University of Pennsylvania, National Institute of Health, University of Utah, Beijing Academy of Science, Shanghai Institute of Neuroscience, National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing, University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, etc. The Guo lab has attracted a team of energetic and highly motivated individuals who share the same goal of working on interesting biological questions related to disease research. In addition, we believe in making our lab a collegial, stimulating and fun place to work in.
Education:
Dr. Guo obtained her M.D. at Fudan University (formally known as Shanghai Medical University) in China. She then obtained her Ph.D. at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), working with Dr. Yuh Nung Jan in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She identified a signaling pathway utilizing three proteins, Numb-Notch-Tramtrack, that is crucial for regulating asymmetric cell divisions during neural stem cell development. She showed that Numb, a membrane-associated protein asymmetrically segregated to one of the daughter cells, negatively regulates Notch, a transmembrane receptor mediating cell-cell interactions during multiple developmental processes. This is accomplished by a direct physical interaction between Numb and Notch. Notch also positively regulates tramtrack, a zinc finger transcription factor. The Numb-Notch-Tramtrack pathway becomes the core machinery to specify neuronal versus non-neuronal fate during asymmetric division of a neuronal stem cell. In the daughter cell that does not inherited Numb, Notch activity is high and turns on expression of Tramtrack, which acts as a neuronal repressor, making this daughter cell non-neuronal. In the daughter cell that inherits Numb, on the other hand, Notch activity is suppressed, and thus Tramtrack expression is not activated, allowing this daughter cell to become a neuron. The regulatory pathways of numb and Notch, Notch and Tramtrack have been shown to play important roles in multiple tissues in humans and other mammals.
Motivated to use her research to help patients, she returned to the clinical world and completed both Neurology residency training in 2001 and fellowship training in Neurodegenerative Diseases at UCLA. She also trained as an exchange scholar at Queen Square, the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery, University of College London. During her residency training, using nights and weekends, she developed an Amyloid Precursor Protein reporter at Caltech. From the preliminary data generated, she was awarded several fellowships and grants, which allowed her to continue her project as a postdoc fellow in Dr. Larry Zipursky's lab in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She became an Associate Professor at UCLA in 2009, and is also a Visiting Professor at Caltech.
Currently, the Guo lab studies molecular mechanisms of the two most common neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Her clinical work has provided her a constant source of motivation and deep understanding of the diseases for her research. She believes that, with determination and dedication, one can excel in both clinical and research worlds.
Teaching:
One of Dr. Guo's favorite activities is interacting with graduate students, postdocs and other trainees in the lab, and supporting their academic growth. She spends time in the lab and has an open door policy for interacting with lab trainees. She is also on the Admission's Committee for the UCLA MSTP program, and interviews candidates for many graduate programs. Furthermore, she enjoys teaching seminar courses for graduate students, and teaching medical students and Residents during clinical service. In addition, she is one of twenty faculty members in the U.S. who teach a graduate course known as BIO2000 in top graduate programs (Shanghai Academy of Science, Beijing Academy of Science, Beijing University and Tsinghua University) in China. Her teaching performance of BIO2000 has been ranked #1 by her students.
National Service:
Dr. Guo is a Professional Member of the Genetic Society of America and Society of Neuroscience. She is an ad hoc Grant Reviewer for NIH study sections, a member and grant reviewer in National Scientific Advisory Council for American Federation of Aging Research (AFAR), and a Grant Reviewer for multiple foundations including John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation, Alzheimer's Association, and AFAR. She is also a Journal Reviewer for Nature, Science, Nature Cell Biology, PNAS, PLoS Biology, Journal of Cell Biology, Journal of Neuroscience, EMBO, Human Molecular Genetics, etc.
Based on her outstanding performance on the patient-based Neurology Board Certification Examination, she was selected directly by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 2003 to serve as a national examiner, which is recognized as high professional competence in clinical Neurology. In this capacity, she has evaluated hundreds of neurologists nationwide who successfully completed residency for their clinical competence to be accepted to the Board.
2009 Derek Denny-Brown Neurological Scholar Award, American Neurological Association (given to a newly elected member who has achieved a significant stature in neurological research and who promises to continue making major contributions to the field of Neurology) http://www.aneuroa.org/index.php?submenu=Awards&src=gendocs&link=DerekDennyBrown
2009 Elected Member, American Neurological Association
2008 McKnight Neuroscience Brain Disorder Award http://www.mcknight.org/neuroscience/awardee/brain_awards.aspx
2008 Klingenstein Foundation Award in Neuroscience http://www.klingfund.org/fellows/fellows08.php
2008 Klingenstein Foundation the 12th Robert H. Ebert Clinical Scholar Award (given to the most outstanding physician scientist of the year among all awardees)
2008 NIH Independent Physician Scientist Development Award
2004 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Neuroscience http://www.sloan.org/fellowships
2003 The Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging (2nd-4th year funding declined due to overlap)
2003 The Larry L. Hillblom Foundation Startup Grantee
2003 National Examiner for Neurology Board Certification Exam (Part II, Patient-based Exam), American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
2002 Art Linkletter Award for the Distinguished Postdoc of the Year, the John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation
2002 NIH Mentored Physician Scientist Career Development Award
2001 The John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship
2001 The Giannini Family Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship
2001 Jean-Louis Riehl Award for Outstanding Research during Neurology Residency
2000 Resident Research Award, Neurology, UCLA
1993 Nonresident Tuition Scholarship, UCSF
1991 Nonresident Tuition Scholarship, UCSF
1989 Regents Fellowship, University of California
1989 International Fellowship, American Association of University Women (AAUW)