First person – Xing Du

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Xing Du is first author on ‘SMARCA2 is regulated by NORFA–miR-29c, a novel pathway that controls granulosa cell apoptosis and is related to female fertility’, published in JCS. Xing is a postdoc in the lab of Qifa Li at Nanjing Agricultural University, Jiangsu, China, investigating the genetic mechanism and epigenetic regulation of sow prolificacy, and the molecular mechanism of mammalian ovarian granulosa cell apoptosis.