Search Our Scientific Publications & Authors

Plant Physiol 2021 Feb 5. Epub 2021 Feb 5.

BPMP, University of Montpellier, CNRS, INRAE, Institut Agro, Montpellier 34060, France.

In Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), the High-Affinity Transport System (HATS) for root nitrate (NO3-) uptake depends mainly on four NRT2 NO3- transporters, namely NRT2.1, NRT2.2, NRT2. Read More

Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2021 5;19:577-585. Epub 2021 Jan 5.

School of Biotechnology and Key Laboratory of Industrial Biotechnology, Ministry of Education, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China.

Enzyme thermostabilization is considered a critical and often obligatory step in biosynthesis, because thermostability is a significant property of enzymes that can be used to evaluate their feasibility for industrial applications. However, conventional strategies for thermostabilizing enzymes generally introduce non-covalent interactions and/or natural covalent bonds caused by natural amino acid substitutions, and the trade-off between the activity and stability of enzymes remains a challenge. Here, we developed a computationally guided strategy for constructing thioether staples by incorporating noncanonical amino acid (ncAA) into the more flexible N/C-terminal domains of the multi-modular pullulanase from (BtPul) to enhance its thermostability. Read More

Sci China Life Sci 2020 Oct 26. Epub 2020 Oct 26.

National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, CAS Center for Excellence in Biomacromolecules, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.

The tagging of genomic loci in living cells provide visual evidence for the study of genomic spatial organization and gene interaction. CRISPR/dCas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/deactivated Cas9) labeling system labels genes through binding of the dCas9/sgRNA/fluorescent protein complex to repeat sequences in the target genomic loci. However, the existence of numerous fluorescent proteins in the nucleus usually causes a high background fluorescent readout. Read More

iScience 2020 Aug 8;23(9):101444. Epub 2020 Aug 8.

National "111" Center for Cellular Regulation and Molecular Pharmaceutics, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430068, China. Electronic address:

Transient receptor potential vanilloid 6 (TRPV6), a calcium-selective channel possessing six transmembrane domains (S1-S6) and intracellular N and C termini, plays crucial roles in calcium absorption in epithelia and bone and is involved in human diseases including vitamin-D deficiency, osteoporosis, and cancer. The TRPV6 function and regulation remain poorly understood. Here we show that the TRPV6 intramolecular S4-S5 linker to C-terminal TRP helix (L/C) and N-terminal pre-S1 helix to TRP helix (N/C) interactions, mediated by Arg470:Trp593 and Trp321:Ile597 bonding, respectively, are autoinhibitory and are required for maintaining TRPV6 at basal states. Read More

Mol Cell 2020 09 14;79(5):812-823.e4. Epub 2020 Jul 14.

Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA. Electronic address:

Steroid receptors activate gene transcription by recruiting coactivators to initiate transcription of their target genes. For most nuclear receptors, the ligand-dependent activation function domain-2 (AF-2) is a primary contributor to the nuclear receptor (NR) transcriptional activity. In contrast to other steroid receptors, such as ERα, the activation function of androgen receptor (AR) is largely dependent on its ligand-independent AF-1 located in its N-terminal domain (NTD). Read More