"speaker 1: It's a lot easier to do research in a worm, because you
can do what every you want.
We can image the worm, like live worm, and we can look at them.
Like we can use florescence to label the neurons, so it's very convenient, and I think the nematode
has already told us a lot of things, and they will still continue like to tell us.
I was born in China, very like rural area.
The largest town is called Guixi, which is part of the Jiangxi Province.
My parents, they were all farmers, and they also don't know too much about science at
all.
Less than one percent of kids actually made it into high school even.
speaker 2: Where did you go to college?
speaker 1: In the capital city of the Jiangxi Province, like Nanchang.
I did my PhD degree in Iowa State Iniversity.
speaker 2: How did you find Daniel?
speaker 1: I think at that time, I, he posted an advertisement at like WormBase, or at even
like somewhere.
So, I decided to interview with Daniel and I found he's a really nice guy, and everything
seems to be very, very cool here, so I decided to join his lab, and which turns out to works
pretty well so far.
speaker 2: Yeah.
speaker 1: Yeah.
Normal behavior, like everything we are doing, it requires neuronal connection, and if the
connection if broken, and this normally can lead to a lot of neurodegenerative disease.
So one of the goal is for me is to identify the gene is required for this process, which
could lead us to better understand neurodegenerative disease.
speaker 2: So, are you, do you have a family here?
speaker 1: Yes, actually my wife is also a postdoc here, and he, she's studying lung
cancer in like the Cancer Center.
And we have two kids right now, and like one of the is four and a half years old, and the
other one is just one and a half months.
speaker 2: Did you have moments of when things didn't work out so well, and how did you react
to that?
speaker 1: Like 99% of the time, actually, you don't actually, you, you will fail at
like for 99% of time.
speaker 2: You fail 99% of time?
speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, cause it's like a lot of things you have to try and try and try
again.
And like not everything works, and so that's the research life, and I am still staying
here, staying in the research life because I like it.
It's like something you play, the game, or whatever.
If you like it, you will invest a lot of time and like whatever you have, and then you just
keep doing it.
Even like you don't care if it's success or fail, like someone gambling, they lose all
the money and still they want to play again and again.
Something like that, it's not exactly the same, but it's similar, because you like it
and you want to do it.
I mean, this is not like, it's gonna be a long process, but eventually you can like
improve the human health."