Dan Xu, PhD

Dan Xu, PhD

Assistant Professor
Nutrition Graduate Program Faculty, University of Minnesota
Telephone Number
507-437-9624

Biography

Dr. Xu received her Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University and began her postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School. In 2013, she moved to Singapore and continued her postdoc at Duke-NUS Medical School. In 2019, she was promoted as an Assistant Professor at Duke-NUS Medical School Singapore. 

In June 2023, she returned to the USA to advance her career at the Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota. Dr. Xu’s research focuses on the role of RNA regulatory networks in metabolic diseases. Over the years, she has identified several novel regulators such as Ybx2 and HuR in adipocyte metabolism. The findings of her research have been published in prestigious journals such as Nature Metabolism, Nature Communications, Diabetes, and Journal of Experimental Medicine. 

Dr. Xu’s lab has built a solid research platform centering on metabolic physiology study, complemented by bioinformatic analysis and RNA molecular biology.

Education

  • Senior Research Fellow: Program in Cardiovascular & Metabolic Disorders, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore
  • Research Fellow: Program in Cardiovascular & Metabolic Disorders, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore
  • Post-doctoral Research Fellow: Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts
  • PhD: Case Western Reserve University, Ohio

Employment

  • 06/2023–present: Assistant Professor, The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota
  • 2019–06/2023: Assistant Professor, Program in Cardiovascular & Metabolic Disorders, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore

Selected Publications

  1. Li J, Cai C, Teo WW, Chin KS, Naing YT, Song S, Nelson F, Qiang L, Xu D#, Sun L#. Isoform Usage as a Distinct Regulatory Layer Driving Nutrient-Responsive Metabolic Adaptation. Cell Metabolism, 2025 Feb 5:S1550-4131(25)00009-9. (# Corresponding authors)
  2. Xu D, Sun L. HOTAIR underlies the region-specific development of adipose tissue. Nature Reviews Endocrinology. 2022 Sep21
  3. Xu D, Sun L. A functional non-conserved lncRNA in human adipose tissue. Nature Metabolism. 2,385-386 (2020)
  4. Siang DTC, Lim YC, Kyaw AMM, Win KN, Chia SY, Degirmenci U, Hu X, Tan BC, Walet ACE, Sun L, Xu D. The RNA-binding protein HuR is a negative regulator in adipogenesis. Nature Communications. 2020 Jan 10;11(1):213
  5. Arcinas C, Tan W, Fang W, Desai T, Teh DCS, Degirmenci U, Xu D#, Foo R#, Sun L#. Adipose circular RNAs exhibit dynamic regulation in obesity and functional role in adipogenesis. Nature Metabolism. 1, 688–703(2019) (# Corresponding authors)
  6. Ding C, Lim YC, Chia SY, Walet ACE, Xu S, Lo KA, Zhao Y, Zhu D, Shan Z, Chen Q, Leow MK, Xu D#, Sun L#. De novo reconstruction of human adipose transcriptome reveals conserved lncRNAs as regulators of brown adipogenesis. Nature Communications. 2018 Apr 6;9(1):1329. (# corresponding authors)

More publications can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/dan.xu.4/bibliography/public/