
Weizhe Hong
Associate Professor, Biological Chemistry, University of California Los Angeles
Associate Professor, Neurobiology, University of California Los Angeles
Biography
The Hong Lab employs a multidisciplinary approach to identify the molecular and neural circuit mechanisms underlying normal social behaviors as well as their dysregulations in neuropsychiatric disorders. Social behaviors are essential for the survival and reproduction of animals. The control of social behavior is of particular importance in social species such as humans. Abnormalities in social behaviors are associated with several neuropsychiatric disorders, such as autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. Despite its importance, many fundamental questions regarding social behavior and its disorders still remain unanswered. We aim to understand how social behavior is regulated at the molecular and circuit level and how social behavior and social experience lead to molecular and circuit level changes in the brain.
We study these questions across molecular, circuit, and behavioral levels, by linking genes to circuits to behaviors. To do that, we take a multi-disciplinary approach and utilize a variety of experimental and computational technologies, including but not limited to optogenetics/chemogenetics, in vivo/vitro calcium imaging and electrophysiology, various genetic and molecular biology techniques, systems approaches such as next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics, and engineering and computational approaches such as machine learning and computer vision.
Publications
- Yang X, Wang J, Liu RD, Ding Y, Hong W, Yang Y, Hwang J. Home Quarantine Behavior in College Students: The Internal Mechanism and Cross-National Differences.. Psychology research and behavior management, 2022.
- Wu YE, Dang J, Kingsbury L, Zhang M, Sun F, Hu RK, Hong W. Neural control of affiliative touch in prosocial interaction.. Nature, 2021.
- Johnson CS, Hong W, Micevych PE. Posterodorsal Medial Amygdala Regulation of Female Social Behavior: GABA versus Glutamate Projections.. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2021.
- Mohr MA, Wong AM, Sukumar G, Dalgard CL, Hong W, Wu TJ, Wu YE, Micevych PE. RNA-sequencing of AVPV and ARH reveals vastly different temporal and transcriptomic responses to estradiol in the female rat hypothalamus.. PloS one, 2021.
- Ma ML, Shi DW, Li Y, Hong W, Lai DY, Xue JB, Jiang HW, Zhang HN, Qi H, Meng QF, Guo SJ, Xia DJ, Hu JJ, Liu S, Li HY, Zhou J, Wang W, Yang X, Fan XL, Lei Q, Chen WJ, Li CS, Yang XM, Xu SH, Wei HP, Tao SC. Systematic profiling of SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG responses elicited by an inactivated virus vaccine identifies peptides and proteins for predicting vaccination efficacy.. Cell discovery, 2021.
- Zuo Y, Wei D, Zhu C, Naveed O, Hong W, Yang X. Unveiling the Pathogenesis of Psychiatric Disorders Using Network Models.. Genes, 2021.
- Hong W, Liu RD, Ding Y, Jiang S, Yang X, Sheng X. Academic procrastination precedes problematic mobile phone use in Chinese adolescents: A longitudinal mediation model of distraction cognitions.. Addictive behaviors, 2021.
- Raam T, Hong W. Organization of neural circuits underlying social behavior: A consideration of the medial amygdala.. Current opinion in neurobiology, 2021.
- Hu RK, Zuo Y, Ly T, Wang J, Meera P, Wu YE, Hong W. An amygdala-to-hypothalamus circuit for social reward.. Nature neuroscience, 2021.
- Rajbhandari AK, Octeau CJ, Gonzalez S, Pennington ZT, Mohamed F, Trott J, Chavez J, Ngyuen E, Keces N, Hong WZ, Neve RL, Waschek J, Khakh BS, Fanselow MS. A Basomedial Amygdala to Intercalated Cells Microcircuit Expressing PACAP and Its Receptor PAC1 Regulates Contextual Fear.. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2021.
- Lin JW, Tang C, Wei HC, Du B, Chen C, Wang M, Zhou Y, Yu MX, Cheng L, Kuivanen S, Ogando NS, Levanov L, Zhao Y, Li CL, Zhou R, Li Z, Zhang Y, Sun K, Wang C, Chen L, Xiao X, Zheng X, Chen SS, Zhou Z, Yang R, Zhang D, Xu M, Song J, Wang D, Li Y, Lei S, Zeng W, Yang Q, He P, Zhang Y, Zhou L, Cao L, Luo F, Liu H, Wang L, Ye F, Zhang M, Li M, Fan W, Li X, Li K, Ke B, Xu J, Yang H, He S, Pan M, Yan Y, Zha Y, Jiang L, Yu C, Liu Y, Xu Z, Li Q, Jiang Y, Sun J, Hong W, Wei H, Lu G, Vapalahti O, Luo Y, Wei Y, Connor T, Tan W, Snijder EJ, Smura T, Li W, Geng J, Ying B, Chen L. Genomic monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 uncovers an Nsp1 deletion variant that modulates type I interferon response.. Cell host & microbe, 2021.
- Kingsbury L, Hong W. A Multi-Brain Framework for Social Interaction.. Trends in neurosciences, 2020.
- Kingsbury L, Huang S, Raam T, Ye LS, Wei D, Hu RK, Ye L, Hong W. Cortical Representations of Conspecific Sex Shape Social Behavior.. Neuron, 2020.
- Johnson C, Hong W, Micevych P. Optogenetic Activation of β-Endorphin Terminals in the Medial Preoptic Nucleus Regulates Female Sexual Receptivity.. eNeuro, 2020.
- Qian Y, Chai S, Liang Z, Wang Y, Zhou Y, Xu X, Zhang C, Zhang M, Si J, Huang F, Huang Z, Hong W, Wang K. Correction to: KIF5B-RET fusion kinase promotes cell growth by multilevel activation of STAT3 in lung cancer.. Molecular cancer, 2019.
- Kingsbury L, Huang S, Wang J, Gu K, Golshani P, Wu YE, Hong W. Correlated Neural Activity and Encoding of Behavior across Brains of Socially Interacting Animals.. Cell, 2019.
- Brinkmalm G, Hong W, Wang Z, Liu W, O'Malley TT, Sun X, Frosch MP, Selkoe DJ, Portelius E, Zetterberg H, Blennow K, Walsh DM. Identification of neurotoxic cross-linked amyloid-β dimers in the Alzheimer's brain.. Brain : a journal of neurology, 2019.
- Chen PB, Hu RK, Wu YE, Pan L, Huang S, Micevych PE, Hong W. Sexually Dimorphic Control of Parenting Behavior by the Medial Amygdala.. Cell, 2019.
- Ondrejcak T, Klyubin I, Corbett GT, Fraser G, Hong W, Mably AJ, Gardener M, Hammersley J, Perkinton MS, Billinton A, Walsh DM, Rowan MJ. Cellular Prion Protein Mediates the Disruption of Hippocampal Synaptic Plasticity by Soluble Tau In Vivo.. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2018.
- Hong W, Wang Z, Liu W, O'Malley TT, Jin M, Willem M, Haass C, Frosch MP, Walsh DM. Diffusible, highly bioactive oligomers represent a critical minority of soluble Aβ in Alzheimer's disease brain.. Acta neuropathologica, 2018.
- Chen P, Hong W. Neural Circuit Mechanisms of Social Behavior.. Neuron, 2018.
- Hong W, Guo RQ, Chen JL, Han EH, Wu T. The implementation of the elastography score in combination with ultrasound prevents unnecessary biopsy of cardiac lesions.. Biomedicine & pharmacotherapy = Biomedecine & pharmacotherapie, 2017.
- Wang Z, Jackson RJ, Hong W, Taylor WM, Corbett GT, Moreno A, Liu W, Li S, Frosch MP, Slutsky I, Young-Pearse TL, Spires-Jones TL, Walsh DM. Human Brain-Derived Aβ Oligomers Bind to Synapses and Disrupt Synaptic Activity in a Manner That Requires APP.. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2017.
- Wu YE, Pan L, Zuo Y, Li X, Hong W. Detecting Activated Cell Populations Using Single-Cell RNA-Seq.. Neuron, 2017.
- Li L, Liang J, Hong W, Zhao Y, Sun S, Yang X, Xu A, Hang H, Wu L, Chen S. Evolved bacterial biosensor for arsenite detection in environmental water.. Environmental science & technology, 2015.
- Wang C, Luo F, Zhou Y, Du X, Shi J, Zhao X, Xu Y, Zhu Y, Hong W, Zhang J. The therapeutic effects of docosahexaenoic acid on oestrogen/androgen-induced benign prostatic hyperplasia in rats.. Experimental cell research, 2015.
- Qian Y, Chai S, Liang Z, Wang Y, Zhou Y, Xu X, Zhang C, Zhang M, Si J, Huang F, Huang Z, Hong W, Wang K. KIF5B-RET fusion kinase promotes cell growth by multilevel activation of STAT3 in lung cancer.. Molecular cancer, 2014.
- Li XY, Zhang XJ, Li Z, Hong W, Liu W, Zhang J, Gui JF. Evolutionary history of two divergent Dmrt1 genes reveals two rounds of polyploidy origins in gibel carp.. Molecular phylogenetics and evolution, 2014.
- Cao Z, Yu Y, Wu Y, Hao P, Di Z, He Y, Chen Z, Yang W, Shen Z, He X, Sheng J, Xu X, Pan B, Feng J, Yang X, Hong W, Zhao W, Li Z, Huang K, Li T, Kong Y, Liu H, Jiang D, Zhang B, Hu J, Hu Y, Wang B, Dai J, Yuan B, Feng Y, Huang W, Xing X, Zhao G, Li X, Li Y, Li W. The genome of Mesobuthus martensii reveals a unique adaptation model of arthropods.. Nature communications, 2013.
- Huang L, Ding Z, Hong W, Wang C, Wu T. Higher-order cross-correlation-based Doppler optical coherence tomography.. Optics letters, 2011.
- Hong W, Yuan H, Li H, Yang X, Gao X, Zhu D. Linear fused dithieno[2,3-b:3'2'-d]thiophene diimides.. Organic letters, 2011.
- Lu YH, Du CB, Liu JW, Hong W, Wei DZ. Neuroprotective effects of Hypericum perforatum on trauma induced by hydrogen peroxide in PC12 cells.. The American journal of Chinese medicine, 2004.