Yang Yang, PhD

Dr. Yang Yang is an Assistant Professor at Van Andel Research Institute, where she leads a research group focused on understanding the molecular basis of neurodegenerative diseases. Her work uses advanced cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to determine high-resolution structures of disease-associated protein filaments directly from human brain tissue. Dr. Yang has made major contributions to defining the structures of α-synuclein filaments from Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies, demonstrating that they share a common Lewy fold. She has also resolved the structures of amyloid-β filaments from Alzheimer’s disease. Together with colleagues, she found unrecognized non-proteinaceous densities inside the filaments and showed that distinct filament conformations are associated with different clinical phenotypes, highlighting the critical role of cofactors in amyloid stability and pathology. Her current research focuses on elucidating the cryo-EM structures of α-synuclein filaments from human synucleinopathies and developing experimental systems that faithfully reproduce human disease filaments.