Zengyi Chang

Biography

 Chang ZengYi received his B.S. degree in Biology in 1984 from East China Normal University (Shanghai, China). He was then accepted as a graduate student of the then Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences before being selected as a CUSBEA (China United States Biochemistry Examination and Application) fellow to pursue his Ph.D. studies at the Department of Biochemistry, Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, USA). In 1992, he received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and afterwards did his post-doc training at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (19921995). In 1996, he became an associate Professor at Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) and was promoted to full professorship in 1998. He moved to Peking University in 2003 where he currently serves as the director of the Center for Protein Science (2005present), and was the Vice-Dean of the School of Life Sciences (20072013). He is currently the President-elect of the Federation of Asian and Oceanian Biochemists and Molecular Biologists (FAOBMB), the Past-President of the Asia Pacific Protein Association (APPA) and a vice President of the Chinese Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He is currently also serving as the executive vice Editor-in-Chief of Science China Life Sciences and an Editor of Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communication, an editorial board member of Protein Science. He also served as an editorial board members for the Journal of Biological Chemistry and IUBMB Life, among others. His laboratory explores the functions and mechanisms of such proteins as molecular chaperones and proteases in the quality control of proteins under stress conditions or during their biogenesis (especially membrane proteins including the ATP synthase) in living cells. His lab also seeks to understand the molecular mechanism of dormancy (e.g., bacterial persister). He has published more than 80 papers since becoming an independent PI in China.

Research Interest

 1. The biogenesis and quality control of proteins, especially membrane proteins, working on molecular chaperones and proteinases (e.g., sHSPs, HdeA, DegP, etc). 2. Stress responses of living organisms: including the molecular mechanism of aging and dormancy.