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Profile of King-Wai Yau PROFILE Jennifer Viegas, Science Writer PROFILE Profile of King-Wai Yau PROFILE Jennifer Viegas, Science Writer Neuroscientist King-Wai Yau of Johns Hopkins Uni- photoreceptors, which are versity has made fundamental discoveries concerning found in the retina, to single the mechanisms underlying sensory transduction. His photons (1). The method rev- research over the past four decades has focused olutionized the study of pho- primarily on vision. “Vision is one of our most precious totransduction and continues senses from which come art, science, humanity, to be used today. Soon after- beauty, and practically all aspects of life,” says ward, Yau, Baylor, and neuro- Yau. His findings concerning phototransduction— biologist Gary Matthews detected the process by which light is converted into a neural the spontaneous thermal ac- signal—have led to a sophisticated understand- tivityofasingleinsitumole- ing of many hereditary diseases causing blindness. cule of rhodopsin, which is a Additionally, Yau has elucidated the process of ol- photosensitive G protein-coupled faction transduction that, like vision, relies on a G receptor (GPCR) found in reti- protein-coupled cellular signaling pathway. His In- nal rods (2). augural Article, signifying his 2010 election to the In 1979 Yau became a re- National Academy of Sciences, advances under- search fellow at Cambridge Uni- standing of the electrical response of olfactory neurons versity, where he studied rod to odorants. photoreception under the guid- ance of Nobel Prize-winning Mentors at Harvard, Stanford, and Cambridge physiologist and biophysicist Yau was born in China in 1948, the sixth of seven Sir Alan Hodgkin. Yau says, “I ’ King-Wai Yau. Image courtesy of Johns children. His family relocated to Hong Kong within greatly admired Hodgkin s Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore, MD). months of his birth. His father died 5 years later. unique thinking, creative ap- Dedicating himself to scholarship and science, Yau proaches, and analytical skills.” excelled in high school. He entered the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Medicine in 1967. After a Discovery of Phototransduction Mechanism year, he set out for the United States, studying at Yau returned to the United States in 1980, having the University of Minnesota before transferring to accepted an assistant professorship in physiology and Princeton University on a full scholarship to study biophysics at the University of Texas Medical Branch in physics and eventually graduating in 1971. “The Galveston. The same year, Yau, Baylor, and Lamb re- best decision that I ever made was to leave medical ceived England’s Rank Prize in Optoelectronics. Yau’s school,” Yau says. “I determined that I did not wish studies on phototransduction came to fruition over the to be a clinician.” next 6 years, when he served as associate (1982–1985) Yau then entered Harvard Medical School, where and full professor (1985–1986). he earned a PhD in neurobiology in 1975. At Harvard, In a series of articles (3–6), Yau and coauthor Kei he studied invertebrate neurobiology under John Nakatani, in parallel with biophysicist Evgeny Fesenko’s Nicholls in the university’s small but influential neu- group in the former Soviet Union, detailed the cel- robiology department. There, he became strongly lular mechanisms by which light triggers vision. Yau influenced by the seminal vision-related work of prom- later summarized these and related findings upon re- inent neurophysiologists Stephen Kuffler, David Hubel, ceiving the Friedenwald Award in 1993 from the As- and Torsten Wiesel. sociation of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (7) From 1976 to 1979, Yau did postdoctoral work at and in an overview article published in PNAS in 2008 the Stanford University School of Medicine in neu- (8). The studies established the roles of signaling + robiologist Denis Baylor’s laboratory. With Baylor molecules—calcium (Ca2 ) ions and cGMP—in rod and neuroscientist Trevor Lamb, Yau developed a photoexcitation (when a rhodopsin molecule experi- method to detect and record the response of rod ences an increase in energy after absorption of a This is a Profile of a recently elected member of the National Academy of Sciences to accompany the member’s Inaugural Article on page 11078 in issue 40 of volume 113. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1707649114 PNAS Early Edition | 1of3 Downloaded by guest on September 29, 2021 photon) and photoadaptation (the negative-feedback reintroduced by neuroscientist Petri Ala-Laurila, em- adaptation of the eye to light), respectively. The phasized that biomolecules have more thermal energy researchers further discovered a ubiquitous mem- than sometimes thought. The finding also helped ex- + brane current associated with the transport of Ca2 plain why humans and other animals do not have in- ions across cell membranes. The same phototransduction frared vision via opsin-based pigments. mechanism operates in cones. In addition to basic research, Yau has been en- A defining feature of rod phototransduction con- gaged in translational work on ocular diseases in col- cerns the relatively large number of G protein mole- laborations, such as with his close colleagues Jeremy cules that are activated by a single light-stimulated Nathans (14) and Maria Canto Soler (15). Yau received rhodopsin molecule and, consequently, the large Portugal’s Ant ´onio Champalimaud Vision Award in number of cGMP molecules turned over. The GPCR 2008 and the National Academy of Sciences Alexander substantially amplifies the incoming light signal; this Hollaender Award in Biophysics in 2013, among other amplification helps explain why rods produce a large honors. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts signal in response to a single photon. The mechanism and Sciences. has since become a focus of increasingly precise study. Identifying Similarities and Differences Between Discovery of Photoreceptors Involved in Vision and Olfaction Circadian Rhythm Yau began collaborating with Randall Reed, co- In 1986 Yau became an investigator at the Howard director of the Center for Sensory Biology at Johns Hughes Medical Institute and a professor of neuro- Hopkins University School of Medicine, on olfaction science and ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins Uni- 15 years ago. “While working with Randy, I became versity School of Medicine. There, in the late 1990s, intrigued by the commonality between vision and Yau solved the phototransduction mechanism of the olfaction,” says Yau. parietal eye of lizards (9). He found that this eye uses a He explains that both vision and olfaction rely upon more elaborate phototransduction mechanism for GPCRs to convert stimuli into brain signals. GPCRs are detecting light than that used by rod or cone cells in involved in innumerable biological processes. It was the two lateral eyes. generally assumed that, as in vision, other GPCRs also He and his team followed up on the work of neu- greatly amplified stimulus signals. Yau, however, showed robiologists Russell Foster, Robert Lucas, and Ignacio that olfactory transduction does not have such high Provencio. This line of research suggested the exis- amplification (16), which could be the norm for most tence of additional ocular photoreceptors and culmi- chemical-triggered G-protein pathways. nated with a discovery by neuroscientist David Berson that certain retinal ganglion cells are intrinsically Uncovering Mechanisms of Olfactory photosensitive. Yau established that the photo- Transduction sensitivity of these cells involves the photopigment Yau’s Inaugural Article describes the two currents melanopsin and that the cells project to brain nuclei for comprising the electrical response of olfactory re- various functions (10). Yau characterized these cells in ceptor neurons to odors, a calcium-activated chloride detail (11) and solved their phototransduction mechanism (Cl) current and a cyclic-nucleotide–gated (CNG) cur- (12), which is distinct from rod/cone phototransduction. “ “Unlike rods and cones, these other photosensing cells rent. (17) These two currents are causally and tightly ” are designed primarily for purposes such as telling us the coupled, so they cannot be easily separated, Yau time of day based on the cycle of light and darkness says. He and his team achieved the separation by around us, not for recognizing visual images,” explains carefully applying the antiinflammatory agent niflumic Yau. The existence of the melanopsin-containing retinal acid to olfactory tissue exposed to an odorant and cells overturned a century of dogma that rods and cones then monitoring the currents. They found that the Cl are the retina’s only photoreceptors. current was dominant, suggesting its important role in olfaction. Source of Visual False Alarms, Translational Work Yau credits the collegiality at Johns Hopkins for his Photoreceptor cells in the eye are known to misfire success in probing the basis of two separate senses, a occasionally in darkness and signal to the brain as if rare feat in sensory neuroscience. Even after decades they had captured photons. The basis of this phe- of intense research, his ardent curiosity about olfaction nomenon largely remained a mystery until Yau and his and vision is evident. “The picture of ocular photore- team determined that high temperatures can cause ceptors consisting of rods, cones and ganglion-cell misfiring (13). The researchers also found that red- photoreceptors is likely incomplete,” he says. “There sensing pigment (i.e., pigment that is sensitive to are probably others in the eye, the brain, and else- long-wavelength light) triggers false alarms most fre- where. Hopefully, before my time is up, we will quently. The discovery, together with a theory first find them.” 1 Yau K-W, Lamb TD, Baylor DA (1977) Light-induced fluctuations in membrane current of single toad rod outer segments. Nature 269:78–80. 2 Yau K-W, Matthews G, Baylor DA (1979) Thermal activation of the visual transduction mechanism in retinal rods. Nature 279:806–807. 2of3 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1707649114 Viegas Downloaded by guest on September 29, 2021 3 Yau K-W, Nakatani K (1984) Cation selectivity of light-sensitive conductance in retinal rods.
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