On 30 October, the 2023 New Cornerstone Fellows Program announced the list of 46 outstanding scientists, including Dr Qinghua Liu, who have been awarded grants.

We would like to extend our warmest congratulations to  Dr Qinghua Liu!

Education Experience

2000    Ph. D. Department of Biochemistry, Baylor College of Medicine, USA

1992    B. S. Department of Biochemistry, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

Professional Experience

2018-    Investigator, National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing, China

201304-202103    Professor，International Institute of Integrative Sleep Medicine (IIIS) University of Tsukuba, Japan

201009-201712    Tenured Associate Professor，University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA

200406-201008    Assistant ProfessorUniversity of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA

200101-200405    Postdoctoral Fellow University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA

Award-winning experience

2004-2008    "Tex" Moncrief Biomedical Research Honours Scholar, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA

2005-2007    Damon Runyon Scholar Award, Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fund, USA.

2001-2004    Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fund, USA.

Dr Qinghua Liu focuses on the screening and in-depth molecular mechanism study of the core regulatory genes of sleep and fear.

Sleep is indispensable in our life activities, however, the length of sleep varies greatly among animals, and also varies among individuals of the same species. Qinghua Liu's group proposed a new mechanism of transcriptional regulation of sleep, and revealed the core molecular pathway regulating sleep time in mice - the LKB1-SIK3-HDAC4/5-CREB in 2022. In the future, this research may help us to understand and solve the problems of sleep defects and sleep diseases, and further promote human beings to explore high-quality sleep and build a good state of life.

On the other hand, emotion is one of the fundamental traits of human beings and an important motivation driving animal behavior. In collaboration with Nobel Laureate Dr Bruce Beutler, Qinghua Liu's group conducted the first positive genetic screening for "fear" and identified "fearful" and "fearless" mutant mice. Fearful" and "fearless" mutant mice were identified. TRPA1 was found to be a novel chemical sensor that senses predator odor to induce innate fearful (e.g., cold) behaviors, and a new brain region was identified that regulates innate fear-induced hypothermia.

In addition, Qinghua Liu's group has developed a novel adult mouse brain chimeric (ABC) expression/knockout system for somatic cellular genetics analysis, which is useful for high-throughput screening of sleep/fear-regulated genes and elucidating the molecular mechanisms of sleep and innate fear.

New Cornerstone Fellowship

The New Cornerstone Fellowship Program is a new type of basic research funding program created by Tencent in 2022, which focuses on original innovation, encourages free exploration, and is a public benefit. It aims to provide long-term and stable support for a group of outstanding scientists to focus on basic research and achieve "0 to 1" original innovation. The program covers two major areas: mathematics and material science, and biology and medical science, and encourages cross-disciplinary research. The New Cornerstone Fellows are divided into two categories: the experimental category is funded at RMB 25 million per person for five years, and the theoretical category is funded at RMB 15 million per person for five years. 58 outstanding scientists have become the first (2022) New Cornerstone Fellows in January 2023.