other lectures & events

Special Seminar:Tightly Linking Chemistry and Biology through Covalent Bonds

Biological interactions are always weak and transient, which present significant challenges for us to dissecting these processes! Therefore, biocompatible covalent bond formations (or so called ligations) may greatly facilitate the studies of these complex biological processes through turning the week and transient interactions to the strong covalent interactions. In this lecture, I will present several examples from our laboratory about how we use novel covalent small molecule probes or biocompatible ligation chemistry to dissect fundamental cellular events such as programmed cell death as well as to explore the complex protein structures and protein-protein interactions. In particular, I will focus on an emerging technology we have been actively developing over the past 5 years, chemical cross-linking of proteins coupled with mass spectrometry analysis (CXMS). I will demonstrate that how novel bioconjugation chemistry enable the new advancement of CXMS and how we apply CXMS as a powerful tool in combination of X-ray crystallography or Cryo-electron microscopy to elucidate the complex protein machinery structures and systematically map protein-protein interactions. Peking University (PKU)