Journal of Biochemistry and Biophysics

Dr. Ni Zhi Yong is a Professor at Xinjiang Agricultural University, currently affiliated with the College of Life Sciences (since September 2021). He previously served as Professor (2019–2021) and Associate Professor (2013–2019) at the College of Agronomy, Xinjiang Agricultural University. Earlier, he worked as a Research Assistant at the Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Institute of Nuclear and Biological Technologies (2008–2010). Dr. Ni earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Institute of Crop Science in 2013. He also holds an M.S. in Crop Genetics and Breeding (2008) and a B.S. in Agronomy (2005) from Northwest A&F University, College of Agronomy. His research focuses on crop genetics, breeding, and molecular biology, with significant contributions recognized through prestigious awards, including the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Science and Technology Progress Award (First Prize, 2011) and multiple Natural Science Outstanding Academic Paper Awards.

Research: crop genetics, breeding, and molecular biology

Prof. Chuanhe Zhu is a distinguished Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor at the College of Food Science and Technology, Shandong Agricultural University, China. He currently serves as the Dean of the Department of Food Biotechnology and Director of the Food Engineering Master's Program. Prof. Zhu earned his Ph.D. in Fermentation Engineering from Tianjin University of Science and Technology (2003–2006), following his Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Food Science and Processing and Storage of Agricultural Products from Shandong Agricultural University. With over two decades of academic and research experience, Prof. Zhu has made significant contributions to the fields of food biotechnology, fermentation technology, and agricultural product processing. He has also served as a Visiting Scholar at Iowa State University, USA (2014–2015), where he expanded his expertise in advanced food engineering systems and microbial biotechnology. His leadership at Shandong Agricultural University has been instrumental in advancing research and innovation in sustainable food processing and bioproduct development.

Research: Food Biotechnology and Fermentation Engineering, Microbial Metabolism and Enzyme Technology, Functional Food Development and Nutritional Enhancement, Bioprocess Optimization for Agricultural Products, Sustainable Food Processing and Preservation Technologies

Dr. Xiaona Wang is an Associate Professor at the Henan Key Laboratory of Childrens Genetics and Metabolic Diseases, Childrens Hospital affiliated with Zhengzhou University, China. She obtained her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Shandong University and completed her postdoctoral training in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis, USA. Her research focuses on the molecular and circuit mechanisms underlying autism spectrum disorder, epilepsy, and intellectual disability, emphasizing neurotransmission, receptor regulation, and neuroprotective drug mechanisms. Dr. Wang has authored numerous papers in leading journals such as Molecular Neurobiology, Molecular Autism, Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, and Neurochemical Research. She serves as Academic Editor for PLoS One, Youth Editor for Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology, and Guest Editor for Frontiers in Psychiatry. Dr. Wang has received several provincial scientific achievement awards and holds multiple invention patents in neurogenetic diagnostics and therapeutics. Her work significantly advances the biochemical and molecular understanding of neurodevelopmental and neurological disorders.

Research: Molecular and Circuit Mechanisms Underlying Autism Spectrum Disorder, Epilepsy, and Intellectual Disability, Emphasizing Neurotransmission, Receptor Regulation, and Neuroprotective Drug Mechanisms

Research: Dr. Liqing Yu had long-term interest in the metabolism of lipids (cholesterol, triglycerides, fatty acids, etc.) and lipoproteins. His recent research has been focused on the roles of dysregulated lipid metabolism in the development of metabolic diseases such as obesity, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and atherosclerosis. He had extensive experience in the generation and application of genetically engineered mouse models for in vivo pathophysiological studies of lipid metabolism.

Dr. Yue Chen obtained his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Peking University in China and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Arlington. After his postdoctoral fellowship research at the University of Chicago. He joined the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the University of Minnesota. He is a member of Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota. His areas of interests include the biochemistry and enzymology in protein modification pathways, protein-protein interaction and protein complex analysis, functional proteomics and quantitative metabolomics, bioinformatics and chemical biology.

Research: Yue Chen research aims to develop and apply powerful proteomic technologies in combination with biochemistry, cell biology and computational analysis to understand the dynamic profiles of the PTM networks in various diseases, and reveal the correlation between cellular metabolism and diverse PTM pathways.

Dr. Zhu obtained his Bachelor of Science in Pharmacology from Peking University in China. He did his Ph.D. in Pharmacology with Drs. Heng Zhu and Diane Hayward at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Then he completed his postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Stephen Elledge at Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard Medical School. Dr. Zhu joined the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology (primary) and Biochemistry and Biophysics (secondary). 

Research: Dr. Zhu’s lab studies the host-virus interactions, particularly for HIV and herpesviruses, by using recently developed, multidisciplinary systematic approaches, and work at the interface of virology, immunology, proteomics, and functional genomics. The goal is to construct a global landscape of gene network modulating viral infection by integrating multiple systematic approaches and further study key genes that play a role in viral replication or host antiviral defense using cell and/or animal models and multiple skills including biochemistry and biophysics. 

Elmar J Prenner got his Degree of Diplom Ingenieur and PhD in the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Technology in Graz. His PhD thesis investigated the lateral architecture and lipid domain formation in erythrocyte membrane using time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. Subsequently, he was supported by an EMBO postdoctoral fellowship to work in the group of Dietmar Möbius at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry on lateral membrane organization using Brewster angle microscopy. Then he joined Karl Lohner at the Austrian Academy of Science to work on antimicrobial peptides and finally was supported by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) to work on the membrane interactions of antimicrobial peptides with Ron McElhaney at the University of Alberta. In 2002, again support by AHFMR, he joined the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary. In 2008 he was appointed as a tenure-track faculty.

Research: His research includes structure and function of biological membranes with a focus on the role of lipids, lateral domain organization, lipid-protein interactions; biomimetic model systems and nanotechnology; nanotoxicology, membrane biophysics and bioanalytical chemistry.

Dr. Jianfei Qi got his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry at University of Toronto. His thesis work was under direction of Dr. Chi-Hung Siu, and focused on role of N-cadherin and b-catenin signaling in the transendothelial migration of cancer cells, an important step in the cancer metastatic cascade. He joined Dr. Ze’ev Ronai’s laboratory at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute as a postdoctoral fellow and then as a staff scientist. His postdoctoral work identified a key role for the E3 ubiquitin ligase Siah2 in the neuroendocrine differentiation and castration resistance of human prostate cancer via the regulation of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF-1a) and androgen receptor (AR) pathways, respectively. He was establishing his own laboratory at University of Maryland School of Medicine and will further investigate the mechanisms of Siah2 and histone demethylase Jmjd1a in the prostate cancer biology.

Research: Dr. Jianfei Qi research interest is to elucidate the mechanisms by which the E3 ubiquitin ligase Siah2, histone demethylase Jmjd1a and their downstream effectors influence two major phenotypes associated with the more advanced forms of prostate cancer (PCa) – castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) and neuroendocrine differentiation (NED). His previous work has begun to identify the molecular mechanisms by which Siah2 promotes castration resistance, which provide initial insight into the role of Siah2 on CRPC and NED via regulation of androgen receptor (AR) and hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF), respectively. Further investigation of the mechanisms by which Siah2 and Jmjd1a regulate their downstream signaling in prostate cancer models will likely lead to novel markers and targets for the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of aggressive prostate cancer in the future.  

Dr. Hironao Wakabayashi obtained MD/PhD at Fukushima Medical University in Japan in 1992. He joined the Department of Tumor Biology at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center  as a postdoctoral fellow. Currently he is a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics at University of Rochester since 1997.

Research:   Protein structure and function analysis Enzyme kinetics Blood coagulation factors

Research: Conformational transitions in biopolymers Helix-coil transition in biopolymers RNA and protein folding         DNA condensation

Dr. Junjie Zhang received his Ph.D. degree at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 2009. Working with Professor Wah Chiu, Dr. Zhang used cryo-electron microscopy to image macromolecules at high resolution. He then moved to Stanford University as a postdoc fellow to work with Professor Michael Levitt, who later received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry of 2014. During his training in Professor Levitt’s lab, Dr. Zhang used computational methods to extend the application of biological electron microscopy.

Research: Structural Biology Computational Biology

Dr. An earned his Ph.D. in 2005 from the Chemistry Department at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. After a period as a postdoctoral scholar at the Pennsylvania State University, he joined the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Currently he is an Assistant Professor at UMBC and also a member of graduate faculty for the Graduate Program in Life Sciences, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland.

Research: The broad objective of the S. An laboratory is to contribute to our understanding of how sequential metabolic enzymes are organized in living cells and how such metabolic organizations are spatiotemporally regulated in response to cellular signals relevant to human diseases. Since the concept of metabolic complexes was conceived in 1970s, the discovery of the “purinosome”, a reversible metabolic complex for de novo purine biosynthesis stands as the first example of this cellular phenomenon in live cells. Real-time detection of the reversible purinosomes in live cells sets the stage for an extraordinary opportunity to explore the spatial and temporal advantages to the cell in assembling and disassembling this cluster of proteins. Indeed, the S. An lab is highly motivated to explore the purinosome further with strong emphasis on signaling pathways and, in parallel, search for another metabolic complex as the heart of human disease mechanisms.

Amália Jurado obtained her Degree in Biology, M.Sc. in Cell Biology and Ph.D. in Biochemistry in the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Her research has been focused on biological membranes and, as leader of the Group “Membrane Toxicity” at the Centre for Neurosciences and Cell Biology (2002-2010), her research was devoted to understanding how lipid collective properties govern bilayer structure, influence membrane functioning and are affected by the incorporation of foreign molecules. In 2011, she joined the Group “Vectors and Gene Therapy” at the same Centre and her contribution regards the definition of architecture parameters that endow non-viral nucleic acid delivery systems with transfection competence, through biophysical studies.

Research: Lipidomics and Biophysics, exploring different topics: i. Membrane lipid composition and biophysical properties involved in cell malfunctioning and disease; ii. Lipid membrane structure and dynamics in relation to drug research; iii. Membrane lipid composition changes and membrane structure remodeling induced by diet in mammals and by environmental stress in bacteria; iv. Interaction of non-viral drug vectors with cell membranes. Biochemical toxicology, with emphasis in: i. Development of in vitro assays for toxicity assessment alternative to animal use; ii. Investigation of the molecular mechanisms underlying the cytotoxic effects of xenobiotics with interest in pharmaceutics and agrochemical industries, using different model systems; iii. Study of the alterations of the homeostatic equilibrium of biological systems induced by membrane-active xenobiotics and nanostructures and establishment of structure-activity relationships.

Research: Investigations of structure of DNA and DNA-ligand complexes at different functional states of genome. Determination of thermodynamic parameters of DNA and its complexes with biologically active ligands (anti-cancers, anti-mutagenes etc.) by various methods.

Research: Physical chemistry, biomedical physical chemistry, molecular spectroscopy, folding, denaturation and complex formation of proteins 

Dr. Martin Falk is currently working as Head and Professor of Institute of Biophysics of ASCR, Czech Republic. He received Ph.D in Faculty of Sciences at Masaryk University and worked as a research scientist for many years. He received the price of the Deutsche Gesellchaft für DNA-Reparaturforschung and Otto Wichterle Award for outstanding young scientists, Czech Academy of Sciences. Dr. Martin Falk is a prominent member of Scientific Selection Panel of the Center of Accelerators and Nuclear Analytical Methods (CANAM), Czech Microscopic Association and an Editorial Board member of many peer reviewed journals.

Research: Dr. Martin Falk’s research interests are Radiation damage and DNA repair, cellular response to ionizing radiation, Chromatin structure, function and dynamics in regulation of nuclear processes, Pathogenesis of acute promyelocytic leukemia, Trinucleotide expansions and TREDs.