Kristal Hung Yi Kaan

Biography

Kristal is an scholar in Molecular Biology at institute of molecular & cell biology. 

Research Interest

Hippo signaling pathway has been implicated in the regulation of organ size by promoting apoptosis (programmed cell death). When the delicate control of organ size is disturbed, cell proliferation goes uncheck and tumors form. While there are several proteins involved in the pathway, they can be grouped into three components: the upstream regulatory factors, the kinase core and the downstream transcriptional machinery. The aim of my research is to use structural biology techniques to shed light on the regulation and functions of the various proteins in the Hippo pathway. By understanding the molecular mechanism of how the proteins interact with their binding partners and activate or deactivate their downstream effectors, we hope to come up with new strategies for cancer therapeutics. My Ph.D. research was conducted in Prof. Frank Kozieski’s lab at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research. For my thesis, I determined the crystal structures of human mitotic kinesin Eg5 in complex with various inhibitors, for structure-based cancer drug design. In addition, I determined the structure of an autoinhibited conventional kinesin complex, which allowed us to elucidate a novel autoinhibition mechanism (Kaan et al., Science, 2011).