Biography

Dr. Wen-Jie Bian earned his bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology at Zhejiang University of Technology in 2008 and Ph.D. in Neurobiology at the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2016. From 2016 to 2022, Dr. Bian did postdoctoral training with Prof. Luis de Lecea at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Stanford University School of Medicine, and was promoted to an instructor in 2022. His work on neural circuit development and sleep function was published in journals including Cell, Nature Neuroscience, Neuroscience Bulletin, and Developmental Neurobiology. Dr. Bian has received multiple awards, including the Society for Neuroscience Trainee Professional Development Award, Human Frontier Science Program Long-term Postdoctoral Fellowship and Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator Award. In 2023, Dr. Bian will join Westlake University as a Principal Investigator and start the Laboratory of Sleep and Neural Development.

Research

Sleep takes one third of our lives and is essential for almost all animals. Sleep architecture evolves dramatically as development proceeds. In early postnatal life, the majority of sleep is so-called rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, while the percentage of non-REM (NREM) sleep gradually increases in later developmental stages. The total amount of sleep, including both NREM and REM sleep, gradually decreases as the development progresses from childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood, at which stage it becomes stabilized at approximately 7-8 hours daily. Compared to adult sleep, sleep during adolescence and childhood also exhibits more features in electroencephalography (EEG), such as slow waves and sleep spindles. However, most of the sleep studies so far was done in adult subjects, while the developmental functions of sleep as well as the mechanisms underlying sleep control during development remain largely unexplored.

Dr. Bian’s Ph.D. work identified a competition-based mechanism through which the neighboring dendritic spines in the brain (connections between neurons) compete for limited intracellular resource, such as the cadherin/catenin cell adhesion complexes, which determines spine fate and refines the neural circuitry during adolescent development (Cell, 2015). During his postdoc, Dr. Bian shifted his research interests to the developmental role of sleep and uncovered a novel sleep function, i.e., sleep during adolescence shapes the behavioral preference for social novelty later in adulthood by regulating the development of midbrain dopaminergic circuits (Nature Neuroscience, 2022). Furthermore, Dr. Bian’s work suggests that certain neurodevelopmental disorders (such as autism) are linked to distinct abnormalities in dendritic spines and sleep during development (Neuroscience Bulletin, 2017; Nature Neuroscience, 2022).  

The Bian lab at Westlake University studies the neurobiology of sleep from a developmental perspective. We aim to answer important questions including what developmental functions sleep carries and why and how sleep architecture is developmentally regulated. To tackle these questions, we use mice and rats as model animals and employ a variety of techniques including behavioral analysis, electroencephalography/electromyography, two-photon in vivo imaging, fiber photometry, opto-/chemogenetics, combined with biochemistry and molecular biology methodologies. Current research directions of the lab include (but not limited to): 1) the circuit and molecular mechanisms underlying the developmental change of sleep architecture, 2) the developmental role of sleep in shaping behavioral functions (e.g., social behavior), 3) shared pathology of sleep disorders and neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., autism and schizophrenia) and its contribution to aberrant behaviors, and 4) sleep-induced DNA repair during development.

Representative  Publications

* Co-corresponding authors

1. Bian WJ*, Brewer CL, Kauer JA, de Lecea L*. (2022) Adolescent sleep shapes social novelty preference in mice. Nature Neuroscience. 25(7):912-923. doi: 10.1038/s41593-022-01076-8. [highlighted by Nature Neuroscience News & Views, (doi: 10.1038/s41593-022-01103-8) and Spectrum (doi: 10.53053/ZKSE1007)]

2. Bian WJ, Miao WY, He SJ, Qiu Z, Yu X. (2015) Coordinated spine pruning and maturation mediated by inter-spine competition for cadherin/catenin complexes. Cell. 162(4): 808-822. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2015.07.018. [highlighted by Nature Review Neuroscience 16(10):577 and selected as “exceptional” by Faculty 1000.]

3. Wang M, Li H, Takumi T, Qiu Z, Xu X*, Yu X*, Bian WJ*. (2017) Distinct defects in spine formation or pruning in two gene duplication autism mouse models. Neuroscience Bulletin. 33(2):143-152. doi: 10.1007/s12264-017-0111-8.

4. Li SB, Damonte VM, Chen C, Wang GX, Kebschull JM, Yamaguchi H, Bian WJ, Purmann C, Pattni R, Urban AE, Mourrain P, Kauer JA, Scherrer G, de Lecea L. (2022) Hyperexcitable arousal circuits drive sleep instability during aging. Science. 375(6583):eabh3021. doi: 10.1126/science.abh3021.

5. Liu Z, Li X, Zhang JT, Cai YJ, Cheng TL, Cheng C, Wang Y, Zhang CC, Nie YH, Chen ZF, Bian WJ, Zhang L, Xiao J, Lu B, Zhang YF, Zhang XD, Sang X, Wu JJ, Xu X, Xiong ZQ, Zhang F, Yu X, Gong N, Zhou WH, Sun Q, Qiu Z. (2016) Autism-like behaviours and germline transmission in transgenic monkeys overexpressing MeCP2. Nature. 530(7588): 98-102. doi: 10.1038/nature16533.

6. Bian WJ, Miao WY, He SJ, Wan ZF, Luo ZG, Yu X. (2015) A novel Wnt5a-Frizzled4 signaling pathway mediates activity-independent dendrite morphogenesis via the distal PDZ motif of Frizzled 4. Developmental Neurobiology. 75(8): 805-822. doi: 10.1002/dneu.22250.

Contact 

Email: bianwenjie@westlake.edu.cn