Department of Structural Biology Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA
My current research uses a combination of X-ray crystallography, biochemistry, and chemical biology to address the molecular mechanism of transcription preinitiation and initiation by RNA polymerase II. Specific topics include the assembly of the transcription preinitiation complex, transcription start site selection, and abortive initiation.
My biomedical research training started at Nanjing University, China, where I majored in biochemistry as an undergraduate. In 2007, I received my PhD in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, where I did my thesis study in the laboratory of Ronen Marmorstein at The Wistar Institute. My graduate work centers on the structural and functional studies on the retinoblastoma and p300/CBP tumor suppressor proteins and their regulation by viral oncoproteins. During my graduate study I became fascinated by the broad field of transcription, epigenetics and chromatin, given its enormous impact on human diseases. I joined the laboratory of Roger Kornberg at Stanford University in 2008 and, since then, I have been studying the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription by RNA polymerase II.