Personal profile

Dr. Junchao Dong received his B.S. from Fudan University and Ph.D. from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He conducted his postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Frederick Alt at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, during which he studied the functional mechanism of how DNA damage response factors impact antibody class switch recombination in mature B cell through developing state-of-the-art high-throughput sequencing technology.

Supported by the National High-level Talent Youth Project, the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Team of Guangdong Pearl River Talent Plan, Dr. Dong was recruited by the Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University as a professor in Immunology in 2017. Since then he focused studying the regulation of B lymphocyte development, responses and differentiation by epigenetic and transcription factors. He is also interested in deciphering the underlying mechanisms of B cell tumors caused by abnormal B cell development and germinal center responses, and developing remedies for their better cure. Dr. Dong's research activities haven been turned into publications on prestigious science journals including Nature, PNAS, Molecular Cell, Nature Commnications, EMBO J.,  Cell Reports, J. Leukocyte. Biol. 

Publications

1. Yanan Zhao*, Shuoxu Gong*, Yaling Yang, Jingning Bai, Yimiao Lu, Meiling Liu, Wanyu Bai, Junchao Dong#. CFP1 promotes germinal center affinity maturation and restrains memory B cell differentiation through H3K4me3 modulation. Nature Communications. 2025 Aug 27;16(1):8013. 

2. Yang, Y Guo, L Liu, T Huang, B Zhao, W Bai, G Zhang, C Zhu, J Dong#，The LIM-domain-only protein LMO2 and its binding partner LDB1 are differentially required for class switch recombination. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2025 Jan 28;122(4):e2412376122

3. Du L, Oksenych V, Wan H, Ye X, Dong J, Ye AY, Abolhassani H, Vlachiotis S, Zhang X, de la Rosa K, Hammarström L, van der Burg M, Alt FW, Pan-Hammarström Q. Orientation Regulation of Class-switch Recombination in Human B Cells. J Immunol. 2024 Oct 15;213(8):1093-1104. 

4. Liu Y, Ye SY, He S, Chi DM, Wang XZ, Wen YF, Ma D, Nie RC, Xiang P, Zhou Y, Ruan ZH, Peng RJ, Luo CL, Wei PP, Lin GW, Zheng J, Cui Q, Cai MY, Yun JP, Dong J, Mai HQ, Xia X, Bei JX. Single-cell and spatial transcriptome analyses reveal tertiary lymphoid structures linked to tumour progression and immunotherapy response in nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Nature Communications. 2024 Sep 4;15(1):7713

5. Zhao B, Xia Z, Yang B, Guo Y, Zhou R, Gu M, Liu M, Li Q, Bai W, Huang J, Zhang X, Zhu C, Leung KT, Chen C, Dong J#. USP7 promotes IgA class switching through stabilizing RUNX3 for germline transcription activation. Cell Rep. 2024 May 28;43(5):114194. 

6.Huang ME, Qin Y, Shang Y, Hao Q, Zhan C, Lian C, Luo S, Liu LD, Zhang S, Zhang Y, Wo Y, Li N, Wu S, Gui T, Wang B, Luo Y, Cai Y, Liu X, Xu Z, Dai P, Li S, Zhang L, Dong J, Wang J, Zheng X, Xu Y, Sun Y, Wu W, Yeap LS, Meng FL. C-to-G editing generates double-strand breaks causing deletion, transversion and translocation. Nat Cell Biol. 2024 Feb;26(2):294-304. 

7. C Li, L Wen, J Dong, L Li, J Huang, J Yang, T Liang, T Li, Z Xia, C Chen. Alterations in cellular metabolisms after TKI therapy for Philadelphia chromosome-positive leukemia in children. Frontiers in Oncology. 2022 Dec 6:12:1072806.12, 1072806

8. Bai W, Zhao B, Gu M, Dong J#. Alternative end-joining in BCR gene rearrangements and translocations. Acta Biochim Biophys Sin . 2022 May 25;54(6):782-795. 

9. Wanyu Bai,  Guangchao Zhu, Jiejie Xu,  Pingyue Chen,  Feilong Meng, Hongman Xue, Chun Chen# and Junchao Dong#. 3’-flap endonuclease XPF-ERCC1 promotes alternative end joining and chromosomal translocation during B cell class switching. Cell Reports. 2021 Sep 28;36(13):109756.

10. X Sun, M Liu, J Bai, J Xu, C Zhu, J Dong#, C Chen#.  ATR kinase activity promotes antibody class switch recombination in B cells through cell cycle regulation without suppressing DSB resection and microhomology usage. J. Leukoc Biol. 2021 Apr 22

11. Sun X, Bai J, Xu J, Xi X, Gu M, Zhu C, Xue H, Chen C, Dong J#. Multiple DSB Resection Activities Redundantly Promote Alternative End Joining-Mediated Class Switch Recombination. Front Cell Dev Biol. 2021 Nov 26;9:767624. 

12. Dingpeng Yang, Ying Sun, Jingjing Chen, Ying Zhang, et al.,  REV7 is required for processing AID initiated DNA lesions in activated B cells. Nature Communications. 2020(1):1-11

13. Xiaojing Liu, Tingting Liu, Yafang Shang, Pengfei Dai, Wubing Zhang, et al., ERCC6L2 promotes DNA orientation-specific recombination in mammalian cells. Cell Research, 2020:1-13

14. Guoxing Zheng, Qingqing Zhu, Junchao Dong, Xin Lin, Chengming Zhu. Rapid generation and selection of Cas9-engineering TRP53 R172P mice that do not have off-target effects. BMC Biotechnology. 2019

15. Juan He, Qiong Yang, Qiang Xiao, Aihua Lei, Xing Li, Pan Zhou, Ting Liu, Lijuan Zhang, Kun Shi, Quan Yang, Junchao Dong, Jie Zhou. IRF-7 Is a Critical Regulator of Type 2 Innate Lymphoid Cells in Allergic Airway Inflammation. Cell reports 2019: 29 (9), 2718-2730 

16. Panchakshari RA, Zhang X, Kumar V, Du Z, Wei PC, Kao J, Dong J#, Alt FW#. DNA double-strand break response factors influence end-joining features of IgH class switch and general translocation junctions. Proc Natl Acad Sci . 2018 Jan 23;115(4):762-767. (*共同通讯作者)

17. Nguyen HV, Dong J, Panchakshari RA, Kumar V, Alt FW, Bories JC. Histone methyltransferase MMSET promotes AID-mediated DNA breaks at the donor switch region during class switch recombination. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2017 Dec 5;114(49)

18. Hu J, Meyers RM, Dong J, Panchakshari RA, Alt FW, Frock RL. Detecting DNA double-stranded breaks in mammalian genomes by linear amplification-mediated high-throughput genome-wide translocation sequencing. Nat Protoc. 2016 May;11(5):853-71

19.  Dong J, Panchakshari RA, Zhang T, Zhang Y, Hu J, Volpi SA, Meyers RM, Ho YJ, Du Z, Robbiani DF, Meng F, Gostissa M, Nussenzweig MC, Manis JP, Alt FW. Orientation-specific joining of AID-initiated DNA breaks promotes antibody class switching.Nature. 2015 Sep 3;525(7567):134-9 (#co-first author)

20. Gostissa M, Schwer B, Chang A, Dong J, Meyers RM, Marecki GT, Choi VW, Chiarle R, Zarrin AA, Alt FW. gH class switching exploits a general property of two DNA breaks to be joined in cis over long chromosomal distances. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2014 Feb 18;111(7):2644-9

21. Li F*, Dong J*, Eichmiller R, Holland C, Minca E, Prakash R, Sung P, Shim E, Surtees JA, Eun Lee S. Role of Saw1 in Rad1/Rad10 complex assembly at recombination intermediates in budding yeast. EMBO J. 2013 Feb 6;32(3):461-72 (#co-first author)

22. Toh GW*, Sugawara N*, Dong J*, Toth R, Lee SE, Haber JE, Rouse J.Mec1/Tel1-dependent phosphorylation of Slx4 stimulates Rad1/Rad10 dependent cleavage of non-homologous DNA tails.DNA Repair (Amst). 2010 Jun 4;9(6):718-2 (#co-first author)

23 Li F*, Dong J*, Pan X, Oum JH, Boeke JD, Lee SE. Microarray- based genetic screen defines SAW1, a gene required for Rad1/Rad10-dependent processing of recombination intermediates. Mol.Cell 2008 May 9;30(3):325-35 (#co-first author)

Scientific research project

Fund Project:
1. Guangdong Province introduced innovation and entrepreneurship team, team leader, iPS cell-derived tissue construction and research and development of new technologies for the treatment of major diseases, project number: 2016ZT06S029, year: 2017-202
2. Key Project of Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, Host, Molecular mechanism of breast cancer occurrence, development, drug resistance and metastasis based on iPS cell breast cancer model, Project number: 2021B1515120063, year: 2021-2024
3. Sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Cell fate-determining transcription factors regulate cell fate by inducing TAD recombination of chromatin three-dimensional structure. Project approval number: 32170798, Year: 2022-2025
4. National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Director, Function and mechanism of nuclear spatial epigenetic domain regulating neural differentiation. Project Approval number: 31970811, Year: 2020-2023
5. National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Host, Function and mechanism of DNA-binding protein Arid3b in the establishment of pluripotency and Directed differentiation of stem cells, project approval number: 31771639, year: 2018-2021

Award honor

2016 Selected into the second batch of Sun Yat-sen University
2016 Selected as the national high-level talent Introduction youth project
2017 Selected in Guangdong Province \"Pearl River Talent Plan\" to introduce innovation and entrepreneurship team
2017 Backbone of key R&D projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology

Academic part-time job

ad hoc reviewer for the following  journals:
Blood, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Genome Research, Science Signaling, Cancer Letters, Molecular and Cellular Biology, International Journal of Biological Sciences