Mitosis discovery helps Genetics, Development and Disease researcher Ji win 2016 recognition

Zhejian Ji
Zhejian Ji

By Lin Lofley

Six years ago, Zhejian Ji left his native China for the first time and traveled to Texas in pursuit of a lifelong goal – to become a scientist. The trip appears to have been worth it for the 27-year-old researcher, as he recently was named winner of the 2016 Nominata Award.

The award is the highest honor that UT Southwestern Medical Center bestows on a student in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Mr. Ji, who works in the laboratory of Dr. Hongtao Yu, Professor of Pharmacology, recently presented the Nominata Lecture to an audience of faculty members and fellow graduate students.

The Nominata Award was created by the Graduate Student Organization (GSO) in 1980 to recognize academic excellence and research achievement among the advanced graduate students. At its inception, the award included a monetary prize and a gift certificate from Majors Scientific Book Store. Later, each year’s recipient also was given the honor of presenting his or her work to the entire UT Southwestern research community in the University Lecture Series.

The competition is stiff. Graduate School leaders from each of the 11 graduate programs nominate their top candidate. Then faculty members of the Committee on Graduate School Awards further evaluate individual nominees on the basis of both their research accomplishments and presentation skills.

“It was very stressful,” said Mr. Ji of the competitive process for the Nominata. “I drew the last spot in the interviews, so I couldn’t concentrate on much else that day, knowing that my fellow finalists were presenting great work to the committee.”

Graduate School Dean Dr. Andrew Zinn, in announcing the 2016 award, said, “[Mr. Ji] discovered a fundamental step in the mechanism of mitosis, especially mitotic spindle checkpoint control signaling in this pathway. He found that the master checkpoint kinase Mps1 directly competes with microtubules for binding to the kinetochore protein complex Ndc80C. 

“Displacement of Mps1 by microtubules weakens checkpoint signaling and ultimately results in completion of mitosis. This work, recently reported in Science, solves a longstanding mystery and has already made a strong impact in the field.”

“Ever since my lab started in 1999, we had tried to answer the question of how cells in our body sense unattached kinetochores and partition chromosomes equally during cell division,” said Dr. Yu. “Each time a new trainee joined the lab, I would talk to him or her about solving this problem. Zhejian was brave enough to take on this challenge, and has now provided the answer to this fundamental question. 

“It is truly a pleasure to watch his transformation from an inexperienced student to a confident young scientist. I am very proud of what Zhejian has accomplished.”

Mr. Ji’s journey began when he boarded a plane to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport all those years ago.

“I come from a rainy area of China about four hours outside Shanghai,” he recalled. “When I got off the plane here it was 8:30 p.m. – but I could still see the sun, and it was about 95 degrees. I thought, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’”

But it was all worthwhile.

In winning the Nominata, Mr. Ji took another step toward a lifelong goal, perhaps even a dream. When he was 5 years old, he recalls, he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. Back then, he responded: “A scientist.”

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Dr. Yu holds the Serena S. Simmons Distinguished Chair in Cancer Immunopharmacology, and is the Michael L. Rosenberg Scholar in Medical Research.

Dr. Zinn, a Professor in the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development, and in the Department of Internal Medicine, holds the Rolf Haberecht and Ute Schwarz Haberecht Deanship of the UT Southwestern Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.