Xiaowei Zhuang

About

Xiaowei Zhuang is the David B. Arnold, Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She works in the areas of single-molecule biology and bioimaging, developing imaging techniques to study biological systems quantitatively. Her research focuses on creating imaging tools with molecular-scale resolution, single-molecule sensitivity, and dynamic imaging capabilities to visualize molecular interactions and processes inside living cells. Her lab applies expertise from chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering to address biological questions such as protein and nucleic acid interactions, virus infection mechanisms, and neuronal computation. Zhuang received her B.S. degree in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China, her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral training in biophysics at Stanford University. She began her faculty career at Harvard University in 2001, progressing from assistant to full professor by 2006. She joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an investigator in 2005. Zhuang is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. She serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, including Cell, eLife, the Annual Review of Biophysics, Chemical Physics Letters, and Optical Nanoscopy.

Research topics

• Biology
• Genetics
• Computational biology
• Neuroscience
• Cell biology
• Computer Science
• Evolutionary biology
• Chemistry
• Biochemistry
• Artificial Intelligence

Selected publications

• A high-resolution transcriptomic and spatial atlas of cell types in the whole mouse brain

  Nature · 2023 · 988 citations

  . Here we report a comprehensive and high-resolution transcriptomic and spatial cell-type atlas for the whole adult mouse brain. The cell-type atlas was created by combining a single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) dataset of around 7 million cells profiled (approximately 4.0 million cells passing quality control), and a spatial transcriptomic dataset of approximately 4.3 million cells using multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization (MERFISH). The atlas is hierarchically organi…

  DOI

• Deep learning and alignment of spatially resolved single-cell transcriptomes with Tangram

  Nature Methods · 2021 · 856 citations

  Charting an organs' biological atlas requires us to spatially resolve the entire single-cell transcriptome, and to relate such cellular features to the anatomical scale. Single-cell and single-nucleus RNA-seq (sc/snRNA-seq) can profile cells comprehensively, but lose spatial information. Spatial transcriptomics allows for spatial measurements, but at lower resolution and with limited sensitivity. Targeted in situ technologies solve both issues, but are limited in gene throughput. To overcome the…

  DOI

• Genome-Scale Imaging of the 3D Organization and Transcriptional Activity of Chromatin

  Cell · 2020 · 618 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• The Human Tumor Atlas Network: Charting Tumor Transitions across Space and Time at Single-Cell Resolution

  Cell · 2020 · 581 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Crucial transitions in cancer-including tumor initiation, local expansion, metastasis, and therapeutic resistance-involve complex interactions between cells within the dynamic tumor ecosystem. Transformative single-cell genomics technologies and spatial multiplex in situ methods now provide an opportunity to interrogate this complexity at unprecedented resolution. The Human Tumor Atlas Network (HTAN), part of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cancer Moonshot Initiative, will establish a clinic…

  DOI

• Interactions between cancer cells and immune cells drive transitions to mesenchymal-like states in glioblastoma

  Cancer Cell · 2021 · 575 citations

  DOI

Recent grants

• In situ transcriptome imaging in single cells

  NIH · $5.1M · 2016–2022

• Developmental origins of mental illness: evolution and reversibility

  NIH · $38.3M · 2011–2024

• Illuminating molecular mechanisms of cellular functions by single-molecule and super-resolution imaging

  NIH · $2.1M · 2017–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Hazen P. Babcock

  Harvard University

  76 shared

• Jeffrey R. Moffitt

  Boston VA Research Institute

  75 shared

• Cheng Zhu

  The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

  49 shared

• Claus Seidel

  49 shared

• Peter Hinterdorfer

  Johannes Kepler University of Linz

  49 shared

• Nynke H. Dekker

  Delft University of Technology

  49 shared

• Daniel J. Müller

  ETH Zurich

  49 shared

• Sunney Xie

  49 shared

Labs

• Zhuang GroupPI

Education

• Chodorow Postdoctoral Fellow, Physics

  Stanford University

  2001

• PhD, Department of Physics

  University of California at Berkeley

  1996

Awards & honors

• Member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sc…
• Fellow of the American Physical Society
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator

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• Eric Jacobsenh-123
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