Gao Ying

Biography

GAO Ying is a Professor Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yue-yang Road, Shanghai 200031, China. Research Interests: Biological machineries are based on massive dynamic interplays of different biomolecules in the cell. From the biophysical point of view, the essential factors of such interplays include force, energy and kinetics. However, for traditional ensemble experiment to determine the force and kinetics in a biological system is intrinsically difficult as they are either too small or too fast. Optical tweezers (optical trapping) is a newly developed high-resolution technique, which is capable to detect force in a pico-Newton level and displacement in a sub-nanometer scale. More importantly, its temporal resolution can achieve sub-millisecond. By utilizing this special tool and combing with single-molecular biological strategies, we are able to directly monitor the dynamic biological events at a single-molecule level. Specifically, we are interested in understanding the underlined molecular mechanisms on the following important processes: 1) The structural effects of chromatin modification on nucleosomal dynamics, gene regulation. The information carried in the chromatin structure plays crucial role during evolution and can be inherited. Chromatin research has come to the forefront of the modern epigenetics and is believed to hold the key for many unanswered questions in evolution and human diseases. Chromatin modifications directly alert the interactions between DNA and histone, which play important roles in gene regulation. Using single molecular techniques, we aim to unravel the underlying molecular machinery of gene regulation by directly monitoring the processing events of single enzymes walking along on the nucleosome templates and recording the force and kinetics in a real-time manner. 2) Protein unfolding and protein-DNA interactions. Force holds everything together. By applying force we are able to unfold a single protein by optical tweezers. Different from the most of biochemical methods, which use denaturants to unfold the proteins, an appropriate force load can unfold and refold the proteins in a real time. The proteins never denature or lose their activities in such experiments. By using single molecular approaches, we focus on several important proteins which related to the cancer and gene transcriptions.

Research Interest

Biological machineries are based on massive dynamic interplays of different biomolecules in the cell. From the biophysical point of view, the essential factors of such interplays include force, energy and kinetics. However, for traditional ensemble experiment to determine the force and kinetics in a biological system is intrinsically difficult as they are either too small or too fast. Optical tweezers (optical trapping) is a newly developed high-resolution technique, which is capable to detect force in a pico-Newton level and displacement in a sub-nanometer scale. More importantly, its temporal resolution can achieve sub-millisecond. By utilizing this special tool and combing with single-molecular biological strategies, we are able to directly monitor the dynamic biological events at a single-molecule level. Specifically, we are interested in understanding the underlined molecular mechanisms on the following important processes: 1) The structural effects of chromatin modification on nucleosomal dynamics, gene regulation. The information carried in the chromatin structure plays crucial role during evolution and can be inherited. Chromatin research has come to the forefront of the modern epigenetics and is believed to hold the key for many unanswered questions in evolution and human diseases. Chromatin modifications directly alert the interactions between DNA and histone, which play important roles in gene regulation. Using single molecular techniques, we aim to unravel the underlying molecular machinery of gene regulation by directly monitoring the processing events of single enzymes walking along on the nucleosome templates and recording the force and kinetics in a real-time manner. 2) Protein unfolding and protein-DNA interactions. Force holds everything together. By applying force we are able to unfold a single protein by optical tweezers. Different from the most of biochemical methods, which use denaturants to unfold the proteins, an appropriate force load can unfold and refold the proteins in a real time. The proteins never denature or lose their activities in such experiments. By using single molecular approaches, we focus on several important proteins which related to the cancer and gene transcriptions.