Zhang Rongguang

Biography

ZHANG Rongguang is a Professor Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China. Research Areas: Syntrontron x-ray crystallography, structural and functional studies of cell polarity complexes in stem cell differentiation.

Research Interest

Their laboratory studies the structure and function of the proteins related to important biological processes or human diseases. Our technical advantage is synchrotron radiation x-ray source, based on which we will develop new technologies and methods for structural biology. 1. Metastatic Factors Cancer is an inherent disease with severe threat to public health, which is rapidly expanding in China. According to WHO, most of cancer patients die of metastasis, instead of original cancer. Therefore, preventing cancer cells from metastasis is an essential basis of thoroughly curing cancer. Metastasis is a kind of cell migration, but in an abnormal way. Cell adhesion molecules, including integrins, play a key role in the process of cell migration. To fulfill the function of integrin, it has to be activated by a number of intracellular activator proteins. In metastatic cells, some integrin activators were observed to yield a high level of expression, remarkably different from normal cells. Those factors are hence called metastatic factors. However, the mechanism of this activation process and the subsequent conformational changes are still unclear. We believe that our structural biology research will bring an in-depth understanding of the activation process of integrin by metastatic factors, as well as the related processes of cell adhesion and cell migration, providing novel ideas for cancer therapies aiming metastasis. 2. Neurodegeneration diseases Neurodegeneration diseases are a group of diseases involving the progressive loss of structure or function of patients’ neurons, including Alzheimer’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), etc. With the molecular progress of biological research, the abnormal protein molecules related to various neurodegeneration diseases have been identified. Through the structural biology studies of those proteins, the pathological understanding of neurodegeneration will be more direct and accurate. For instance, the expression products of the newly discovered genes in ALS research have inheritable mutations. Those genes exhibit multi-functionalities, but the exact mechanism remains unknown. It is possible for structural biology research to promote our understanding of the pathological mechanisms of neurodegeneration diseases such as ALS.