Report 1: the structural and biological basis of inflammatory bodies against bacterial invasion.
Speaker: Zhang Liman, Assistant Professor, Oregon University of Health and Science (Oregon Health and Science University, OHSU).
Time: 9:00, Friday, July 16, 2021.
A brief introduction to the reporter: Zhang Liman's laboratory focuses on structural immunobiology, that is, the structural study of immune system molecules is used to explain the transmission mechanism of immune signal pathways, to understand the role of signal molecules in resisting pathogen infection and immune system diseases and to interfere with immune regulation and treatment of diseases by designing small molecular drugs or antibody drugs. Dr. Zhang Liman received his bachelor's degree in biotechnology from the School of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine of Jilin University in 2008 and his doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology from Beijing Institute of Life Sciences in 2013. From 2013 to 2019, he received postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Professor HaoWu (Wu Hao) of Harvard Medical School, academician of the American Academy of Sciences, focusing on the activation and regulation of immune receptors. Since 2020, he has been an assistant professor, doctoral supervisor and article reviewer of famous international magazines at Oregon University of Health and Science. To date, a total of 10 academic papers have been published (2 articles with an impact factor of more than 40 points and 3 papers with an impact factor of more than 10 points), of which 6 papers have been published as the first author or co-first author. The first author's articles were published in international first-class journals such as Science (Science), Gene and Development (Genes&Development), RNA, Cell Research (CellResearch), and Structural Biology Research Progress (CurrentOpinioninSturcutralBiology). Zhang Liman's laboratory is supported by MedicalResearchFoundationNewInvestigatorAward and NIHPathwaytoIndependenceAward (K99/R00) of the National Institutes of Health.
Summary of the report: The inflammatory body signaling pathway is an important part of the innate immune system and is essential for initiating the anti-infective immune response and inflammatory response. This signaling pathway is activated by the intracellular pathogen-related molecular model or injury-related molecular model and then controls the activation of GasderminD and inflammatory cell death by activating cysteine protease-1 (caspase-1), activating and releasing proinflammatory cytokines such as IL-1b, and initiating the inflammatory response. We have been committed to studying the molecular structure and signal transduction mechanism of inflammatory bodies for a long time to understand the regulation of this signaling pathway and guide drug design. Through a large number of screening and optimization experiments, we successfully assembled the NAIP/NLRC4 inflammatory body complex in vitro and analyzed the high-resolution structure of the first NAIP/NLRC4 inflammatory body by freeze-electron microscopy. Through structural analysis, we observed that the structural protein NLRC4 molecules transmit danger signals by spontaneously inducing the formation of "disk-like" polymers, which explains the molecular mechanism of NAIP protein recruiting and activating unactivated NLRC4 molecules and inducing their conformational changes through the "recruitment surface". By comparing the structure of receptor proteins in activated and inhibited states, we gradually understand how the immune system maintains fine balance at the molecular level, ensuring that the immune signaling pathway is not self-activated in the physiological state. It can also start the immune response quickly and sensitively when invaded by pathogens.
Report 2: from natural to artificial: bionic multienzyme complex.
Speaker: Kang Wei, Associate Professor, School of Biological Engineering, Dalian University of Technology.
Time: 10:00, Friday, July 16, 2021.
About the speaker: Kang Wei, Associate Professor, School of Biological Engineering, Dalian University of Technology. In 2008 and 2011, he received a bachelor's degree in biotechnology and a master's degree in preventive veterinary medicine from the School of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine of Jilin University. He obtained his doctorate and completed postdoctoral training in Professor Xia Jiang Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2013 to 2019. Dr. Kang Wei's main research interest is artificial protein complexes and their applications in synthetic biology. As the project leader, he has successively presided over two projects at or above the provincial and ministerial level, including one youth project of the National Natural Science Foundation and one special research assistant project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with a total contract amount of 1.07 million yuan. As the backbone of the project, he has participated in a number of projects of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council. Dr. Kang Wei published many SCI papers in Naturecommunications, ACSNano, Currentopinioninbiotechnology and other journals, with a cumulative impact factor of 50. He has participated in many international academic conferences, and in 2020, he was invited to give an invited report at the third Jingqing Forum of the China Chemical Society and won the best wall report of the branch venue of chemical biology. In 2016, he gave an oral presentation at Sunney and Irene Chan Lecture in Chemical Biology 2016, the annual chemical biology meeting in Hong Kong, China.
Summary of the report: the cells in the bioreactor are similar to miniature chemical plants, carrying out thousands of chemical reactions all the time. However, these chemical reactions will produce cytotoxic metabolic wastes, some of which compete with each other. To ensure efficient and orderly intracellular reactions, the enzymes that catalyze multistep reactions in nature often do not exist free but form multienzyme complexes. On the one hand, the formation of a multienzyme complex can realize the orderly organization of enzymes and then realize the strict regulation of multienzyme catalytic reactions; on the other hand, the formation of tight multienzyme complexes can greatly shorten the transport distance of intermediate metabolites and protect unstable products to improve the reaction rate. Therefore, the simulation and construction of multienzyme complexes are receiving increasing attention from scientific and industrial circles.
