Jun Cui

Biography

Dr Cui focused on studying the role and mechanisms of pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) and their relative regulators in innate immune recognition and regulation, signal transduction and disease relevance. The major research achievements include: (1) the first time to identify the important roles of several novel regulatory Nod like receptors (NLRs) NLRC5, NLRX1 and NLRP4 in the negative regulation of inflammation and antiviral responses, suggesting the relationship between these regulatory NLRs and tumor development; (2) the first time to discover the unexpected role of TAK1, a critical kinase of NF-kappaB signaling, in the negative regulation of Toll like receptors (TLRs) induced inflammation in neutrophils, indicating that TAK1 be a new target for treatment of inflammation-related cancers; (3) identify the deubiquitination enzyme ubiquitin-specific protease 3 (USP3) as a novel negative regulator of type I IFN signaling pathway through removing K63-linked poly-ubiquitin chains on RIG-I and MDA5; (4) the serial studies about mitochondrial apoptosis and p53 networks through mathematical modeling and computational simulations. These results have been published on many top journals, including Cell, Nature Immunology, Immunity, Biophysical Journal and Cell Research. The current projects are about the investigation of the molecular mechanism of NOD-like receptor family, TRIMs, and DUBs in innate immunity through combined experimental and computational methods.

Research Interest

Biochemistryand Molecular Biology