Yu-Li Wang
Carnegie Mellon University

Editor, Cell Biophysics
Biophysical Journal

What has been your most exciting discovery as a biophysicist?

It was 1984, when much of today’s technology for cell biophysics has yet to be developed. I have just started my own lab and figured out how to maintain long-term cell culture on a microscope. I have also acquired a sizable laser to produce microbeams for marking cells microinjected with fluorescently tagged proteins (it was before the introduction of GFP technology). One day I was playing with the new setup when, totally unexpectedly, I found that bleached micro-spots placed near a cell’s front “walked away” from the edge of the cell. I soon realized that this must reflect a continuous flux of proteins away from the leading edge and that this flux may represent part of the mechanism for cell migration.  To make a long story short, over the following decade, the observation was confirmed by using multiple techniques, and the “treadmilling” hypothesis for cell migration was widely accepted by the field and described in textbooks. I have since dedicated much of my career to the field of mechanobiology, but to this day, I still remember vividly the excitement of seeing the protein flux for the first time.

Who would you like to sit next to at a dinner party?

I have always valued the ability to use the “left” and “right” brain in a balanced manner. However, my career has limited myself and most friends to be users of the left brain. I would enjoy sitting next to right-brain users, such as musicians, artists, and fiction writers, and listening to their perspectives and aspirations.