Introduction

Dr. Lingjuan He. Principal Investigator at Westlake University. Dr. He received her bachelor’s degree in food science and engineering in 2010 from Nanjing Agriculture University. She then attended the Institute for Nutritional Sciences at CAS for her Ph.D. studies, working on heart development and regeneration. She became a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at CAS after being awarded her Ph.D. degree in 2015. At this stage, she developed new genetic lineage tracing technologies to better understand the in vivo cell fate plasticity of stem cells during tissue repair and regeneration. She joined Westlake University in 2021 as a Principal Investigator. Dr. He would like to develop novel genetic approaches to elucidate in vivo cell proliferation, differentiation, and fate plasticity during tissue regeneration to decipher the cellular and molecular mechanisms in the process of tissue repair and regeneration. She developed the dual recombinasemediated genetic lineage tracing approach for improved precision in cell fate mapping studies. She has explored the developmental origins of coronary vessels using state-of-the-art technology and undeniably evidenced that the adult mammalian heart lacks an endogenous regenerative stem cell. Recently, she took advantage of dual-recombinases to develop an inducible genetic tracing system labeled ProTracer for the continuous genetic recording of cell proliferation in mouse tissues. ProTracer enabled the tissue-specific recording of in vivo cell proliferation and allowed the non-invasive long-term monitoring of cell proliferation in live animals. Using ProTracer, she discovered the cell source for new hepatocyte generation during liver homeostasis, repair, and regeneration. Her current research attends to the development of new genetic tools to trace senescent cells. She is also combining Protracer and senescence tracing tools to decipher the mechanism of cell fate plasticity during tissue regeneration.