Dr. Pinglong Xu received his Bachelor’s degree from Sichuan University in 1998 and his Ph.D. from the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2003. He conducted his postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and subsequently served as an Assistant Research Professor at UCSF. He is currently a Professor and Qiushi Distinguished Professor at Zhejiang University. The Xu laboratory aims to systematically elucidate the signaling mechanisms, functions, and pathological regulation of the nucleic acid-sensing innate immune system. The lab has identified the cGAS-STING-PERK pathway and the neuronal cGAS-STING pathway, and proposed their roles in driving lysosomal storage diseases, organ fibrosis, and cellular senescence. They have also uncovered functions of these pathways in regulating protein synthesis, neuronal death, liquid-liquid phase separation, mitochondrial regulation, and cell transdifferentiation. Furthermore, the lab has put forward academic theories on how proto-oncogenes, blood glucose levels, and the nutritional microenvironment control nucleic acid sensing. Their work has been published in leading journals such as Nature Cell Biology (4 papers) and Molecular Cell (4 papers). Dr. Xu has received funding from the NSFC Innovative Research Group, the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, the NSFC Key Project, and the National Key Research and Development Program.