Yufeng Pan

Professor,Ph.D.

Institute of Life Sciences, Southeast University

2 Sipailou Road, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, 210096, China

Tel: 025-83790967

E-mail: pany@seu.edu.cn

Academic Background

2014/09 - present: Professor, Institute of Life Sciences, Southeast University, Nanjing, China

2009/09 – 2014/08: Postdoctoral Fellow,Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, VA, USA

2004/09 – 2009/08: Ph.D. in Neurobiology, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

2000/09 – 2004/07: B.S in Biophysics, Department of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin, China

Research interest
How the potential for animal behavior is built into nervous system is a fundamental question in neuroscience. It is generally believed that animal behaviors are controlled together by nature (genes) and nurture (environment), but how these two factors jointly control animal behaviors is still poorly understood. I use male courtship behavior in D. melanogaster as a model system to study the following questions: (1) How does the doublesex gene, which is well conserved, function in the nervous system to allow male courtship in an experience-dependent manner? (2) How does social experience affect the courtship circuitry in molecular and neuronal levels? (3) How is the doublesex-and experience-dependent courtship pathway different from the innate fruitless-dependent pathway? My lab is also interested in understanding how an animal chooses one particular behavior from a range of behaviors (e.g., courtship, sleep, feeding)

Selected publications:

1. Y. Pan* and      B.S. Baker*, Genetic identification and separation of innate and      experience-dependent courtship behaviors in Drosophila, Cell,      2014, 156: 236-248: doi:10.1016/j.cell.2013.11.041 (*Corresponding      authors)

2. C. Zhou, Y. Pan, C.C. Robinett, G.W. Meissner      and B.S. Baker, Central brain neurons expressing doublesex regulate female      receptivity in Drosophila, Neuron, 2014, 83: 149-163

3. Y. Pan,      G.W. Meissner and B.S. Baker, Joint control of Drosophila male courtship      behavior by motion cues and activation of male-specific P1 neurons, PNAS,      2012, 109 (25) 10065-10070

4. Y. Pan,      C.C. Robinett and B.S. Baker, Turning males on: Activation of male      courtship behavior in Drosophila melanogaster, PLoS ONE,      2011, 6(6): e21144. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0021144