Curriculum Vitae
Personal information
Name:
Address:
Phone:
Fax:
E-mail:
Date of birth:
Qiang Zhao (Mr.)
3950 Mahaila Ave, APT U13
San Diego, CA92122, USA
+1-858-784-9411 (Lab)
+1-858-784-7020
zhaoq@scripps.edu
Zhaoq02@gmail.com
15/04/1980
Education and training
2007 ~present
2002 ~2007
1990~ 1996
Research associate of Biophysics,
The Stevens lab, Department of Molecular biology,
The Scripps Research Institute,
San Diego, USA
Ph.D candidate of Biophysics,
Laboratory of Structural Biology,
School of Medicine
Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China
Bachelor of Science
Department of Biological Science and Technology,
Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China
Experimental skills
1. Purification and crystallization of membrane proteins, especially GPCRs.
2. CPM assays, activity assays and analytical SEC assays to analyse stability
and affinity of GPCRs.
3. FRAP assays and other LCP tools to analyse the membrane protein behavior
in lipidic cubic phase.
4. Proficient in molecular biology methods such as PCR, site-directed
mutagenesis and gene cloning.
5. Skillful in protein and selenomethionine-substituted proteins expression in
E.coli, Protein purification, Protein crystallization.
6. Experienced in heavy atom soaking.
7. Structure determination including X-ray data collection and processing
using HKL software, phasing with SAD, MIR and MR methods, structure
refinement using CNS and CCP4 software.
8. Bioinformatics analysis of target proteins.
9. Much experience on crystallographic software such as Denzo & Scalepack,
XDS, CNS, O, COOT, CCP4, solve &resolve, Molscript & Bobscript and
PyMOL et al.
10. Characterization of proteins using electrophoresis (native, non-reduced,
reduced and blue-native page), and analysis protein with cross-linking,
western blotting and gel shift assays.
11. GST-pulldown assays in searching of the association proteins using target
protein bait.
Achievements
During my Ph.D study in Tsinghua University, I solved the structure of
spindlin1, one soluble protein with repeated domains. Using GST pull down
assay, I found out that spindlin1 binds to heat shocl protein HSP70 and zinc
finger protein ZNF202. I also found out that the protein binds to DNA and RNA
in a non-specific manner by gel shift assays. These results are published on
Journal of Biochemistry (JBC).
After I got my Ph.D degree in 2007, I went to the Stevens lab as a
research associate, where I started to work on membrane protein
crystallization. One of my main projects is Dopamine receptor 3 (DRD3). The
receptor was stabilized by fusion with T4 lysozyme and introduction of a point
mutation L119W. T4 lysozyme was inserted in different positions with different
lengths of linker between receptor and lysozyme. These constructs were
screened by analytical SEC and CPM assays, and meanwhile I preformed
activity assays to make sure that these constructs kept similar binding profiles
as wild type receptor. One most stable construct was selected, and used for
further purification and crystallization. With the help of FRAP assays and other
LCP tools, the receptor was crystallized and structure was solved at 3.1
angstrom. These results helped a lot to the understanding of ligand selectivity
inside the dopamine receptor family, and facilitate further drug discovery.
Publications
1. Jiang F, Zhao Q, Qin L, Pang H, Pei X, Rao Z. Expression, purification,
crystallization and preliminary X-ray analysis of human spindlin1, an
ovarian cancer-related protein. Protein Pept Lett. 2006;13(2):203-5.
2. Zhao Q, Qin L, Jiang F, Wu B, Yue W, Xu F, Rong Z, Yuan H, Xie X, Gao Y,
Bai C, Bartlam M, Pei X, Rao Z. Structure of Human Spindlin1: Tandam
TUDOR-Like Domains for Cell Cycle Regualtion. J Biol Chem. 2007 Jan
5;282(1):647-56. Epub 2006 Nov 1.
3. Li X, Liu X, Zhao Q, Liu Y, Duan X, Rao Z. Crystallization and preliminary
crystallographic studies of human coactosin-like protein (CLP). Acta
Crystallogr D Biol Crystallogr. 2004 Dec;60(Pt 12 Pt 2):2387-8. Epub
2004 Nov 26
4. Wu B, Liu Y, Zhao Q, Liao S, Zhang J, Bartlam M, Chen W & Rao Z.
Crystal Structure of RS21-C6, involved in nucleoside triphosphate
pyrophosphohydrolysis. Journal of Molecular Biology. 2007, 367 (5):
1405-12