In May, Ludwig Oxford’s Yang Shi was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, the UK’s storied and perhaps most prestigious academy of science, as well as the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a private, nonprofit organization that promotes outstanding science and provides advice to policymakers on critical issues. Yang is best known for his identification and characterization in 2004 of an enzyme, LSD1, that erases methyl marks from histones—a discovery that upended a 40-year dogma about the reversibility of such modifications and has led to the development of new cancer therapies. His lab has since identified and characterized many other histone demethylases and, more recently, identified several enzymes that methylate RNA. Yang and his team today focus mainly on two cancers, acute myeloid leukemia and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, in which epigenetics has been shown to play a crucial role. These honors are a testament to his significant contributions to the field of epigenetics. The Royal Society counts among its Fellows and Foreign Members scores of Nobel laureates, including Ludwig Oxford’s Sir Peter Ratcliffe. Ludwig Oxford Director Xin Lu and Ludwig Lausanne’s Douglas Hanahan are also members of the Society. Our congratulations to Yang on both these well-deserved honors.
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