Shao-Jun Tang
Neuroscientist who, as a postdoc in Erin Schuman's group at Caltech, helped show that a rapamycin-sensitive mTOR pathway is needed for the protein-synthesis-dependent late phase of hippocampal LTP; his lab now studies chronic pain.
Stony Brook Medicine Endowed Professor in Anesthesiology, Vice Chair for Research and Director, Stony Brook University Pain and Analgesia Research Center · earlier Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience and Cell Biology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston · postdoc in synaptic plasticity, Caltech / HHMI, Pasadena · MS and PhD, University of Toronto
Shao-Jun Tang was first author of the PNAS paper (TAN2002; published online in December 2001) from Erin Schuman's group at Caltech. It showed that mTOR, 4E-BP1, 4E-BP2 and eIF4E sit in the dendrites of rat hippocampal neurons, close to synapses, and that rapamycin reduces the late, protein-synthesis-dependent phase of long-term potentiation while leaving the early phase intact. Rapamycin also blocked the synaptic strengthening caused by the growth factor BDNF. The work was done in rodent brain slices and cultured neurons.
Tang trained in molecular genetics at the University of Toronto and did his postdoctoral work on synaptic plasticity at Caltech, in a Howard Hughes Medical Institute group. He later held the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience and Cell Biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch and now directs the Pain and Analgesia Research Center at Stony Brook University.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2002 | M | A rapamycin-sensitive signaling pathway contributes to long-term synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus TAN2002 First author: rapamycin reduces late-phase LTP and BDNF-induced potentiation, and mTOR pathway proteins sit at synapses (rat hippocampal slices and neurons). |
Co-authors in the Atlas
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Shao-Jun Tang.
- Anne-Claude Gingras Showed in 1999 that mTOR phosphorylates 4E-BP1 in a priming two-step mechanism, and now leads work on interaction proteomics (including BioID) that maps how cells read signals such as mTORC1
- Erin M. Schuman Studies how neurons make and break down proteins locally in dendrites and axons; her group helped tie a rapamycin-sensitive mTOR pathway to the protein-synthesis-dependent phase of synaptic plasticity.
- Nahum Sonenberg Co-discovered the mRNA cap-binding protein eIF4E and the 4E-BP proteins that restrain it, and showed how mTOR releases this brake to control protein synthesis
Every researcher with a profile →
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