Qingtao Shen

Biography

Dr. Shen got his bachelor’s degree in 2001 and master’s degree in2004 at School of Life Science, Shandong University, and then obtained his Ph.D degree at School of Life Science, Tsinghua University in 2009. From 2009 to 2016, Dr. Shen received his postdoctoral training in the field of cryo-electron microscopy/tomography at Yale University, University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of California-Berkeley. In July 2016, Dr. Shen joined ShanghaiTech University dually appointed as an assistant professor at School of Life Science and Technology and as a research associate professor (PI) at iHuman institute

Research Interest

Cells especially eukaryotic cells have evolved complicated intracellular membrane system. The interplay between proteins and membrane lipids is central to almost every aspects of cell biology. These interactions not only determine cell and organelle shape and the evolution of shape over time, but also turn on and off the signals that control essential cell processes and communication between cells. Meanwhile, pathogens such as HIV-1 also subvert and co-opt these interactions to invade the hosts. My research interest is to reveal the structure of membrane-interacting proteins, leading to molecular mechanism of protein-membrane interactions. Cryo-Electron Microscopy/Electron Tomography (cryo-EM/ET) has already been proven powerful to examine both in vivo and in vitro heterogeneous samples at diverse scales from cell section to individual proteins with high resolution. These merits draw cryo-EM/ET the heart of my tools, complemented with biochemistry, fluorescence imaging, x-ray crystallography and dynamic simulation, which will lead to a constant stream of new hypotheses about biological function and mechanism. I will also place the highest value upon making direct tests of these hypotheses in cells, and this is the integral map of my research.