时间：5月17日星期三16:00-17:00

Time：4:00-5:00 PM，Wednesday, May 17，2023

主持人：西湖大学生命科学学院特聘研究员 党波波

    Host：Dr. Bobo Dang, PI of School of Life Sciences

    地点：云谷校区E10-222

    Venue：E10-222，Yungu Campus

主讲嘉宾/Speaker:

Xiaokun Shu, Professor, University of California – San Francisco

Prof. Xiaokun Shu is a tenured full professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the recipient of the NIH Director's New Innovator Award. He received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Oregon in 2007. From 2007-2010 he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Prof. Yongjian Qian. Since 2010 he has been an independent PI at UCSF, serving as an assistant professor and tenured associate professor, and was promoted to full professor in 2020.

Professor Shu is a member of the American Society for Cell Biology, Society for Neuroscience, Biophysical Society, and Genetics Society. He is an invited reviewer for Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, Nature Chemical Biology, PNAS, PLOS Biology, Trends in Biotechnology and other journals.

Professor Shu's main research interests are in developing fluorescent biological tools based on physical and chemical principles and engineering tools for visualization of biological processes, detection of signaling pathways, and manipulation of cell and gene functions in plants and animals. His research group has developed a series of novel fluorescent reporter systems for proteases, kinases and protein interactions based on protein interactions, in vivo imaging, tumor drug screening and animal development studies, which have been published in Science, Nature Methods, Nature Chemical Biology, Molecular Cell, JACS, Nature Communications, PNAS and other journals.

In addition, Prof. Shu's research has received numerous grants including NIH R01 (four), U01, The Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) (R35), and NIH Director's New Innovator Award. He has received many grants from various research foundations, and has 11 patents granted.

摘要/Abstract:

Spatial organization and dynamics are the essential features of living systems. Visualizing compartmentalized signaling dynamics is thus critical to understand biological processes. We focus on rational design of new classes of signaling reporters that achieve large dynamic range, high brightness, fast kinetics and high spatial resolution. These reporters are designed based on 1. new physical principles such as multivalent interaction-driven protein phase separation forming intensely bright GFP droplets upon activation of kinases (the reporter is named SPARK for Separation of Phases-based Activity Reporter of Kinase); 2. FlipGFP, a fluorogenic protease reporter by flipping a beta-strand of GFP; 3.  SURF (Split UnaG-based Reversible and Fluorogenic) protein-protein interaction (PPI) reporter by splitting and engineering a new fluorescent protein scaffold UnaG by structure-based design and directed evolution. Our primary goal in designing the new classes of signaling reporters is to enable us in visualizing compartmentalized signaling dynamics in living systems, including PPIs that determine specificity of signal transduction, and effectors such as kinases and proteases that regulate all major signaling pathways. If we understand spatial organization and temporal dynamics of signaling, we will be able to better understand molecular mechanisms of biological processes, laying the foundation for understanding disease mechanisms and identifying drugs for the treatment of various diseases including infectious diseases and cancer.

联系人/Contact：

生命科学学院

于文越 yuwenyue@westlake.edu.cn