On June 27th, an article entitled "Pervasive Chromatin-RNA Binding Protein Interactions Enable RNA-based Regulation of Transcription" was publised by Cell. Its co-first and correspondent author is Rui Xiao, who is a researcher at Medical Research Institute, Frontier Science Center for Immunology and Metabolism, Wuhan University. The co-corresponding author is Prof. Xiangdong Fu from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Their study highlighted the molecular mechanism by which the RNA-binding protein RBM25 regulates chromatin structure and transcriptional activation and inhibition by regulating the binding of transcription factor YY1 to chromatin, demonstrating the specific RNA-binding protein-mediated transcription factor YY1 functional regulation.The entire discovery proposes a new concept of RNA-binding protein as a transcription factor or cofactor to regulate transcription,it opens up a new field of RNA-binding protein function research.

Rui Xiao is a returning talent introduced by Medical Research Institute in 2017. He graduated from the School of Life Sciences of Wuhan University with a bachelor's degree and a doctoral degree. In recent years, Rui Xiao also published several other high-level research papers in leading journals such as Cell (1), Nature (2) and Molecular Cell (2) as first author and correspondent author.