Liming Ying

Biography

Liming Ying is Senior Lecturer in the Section of Molecular Medicine, National Heart and Lung Institute. Dr Liming Ying obtained his PhD in physical chemistry from Peking University in China. After postdoctoral studies at the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, he was awarded a BBSRC David Phillips Research Fellowship and continued his research at Cambridge. He joined Imperial College London in 2006. His research focuses on developing and applying single molecule approaches to address biomedical questions. Liming is head of the Single Molecule Biophysics group within Molecular Medicine. Dr Liming Ying’s research accomplishments include the development of single molecule FRET and FRET fluctuation spectroscopy, two-colour fluorescence coincidence spectroscopy, nanomixer for single molecule kinetics and combined single molecule wide-field fluorescence/TIRF imaging. These methods have been applied to study the conformational fluctuation of DNA hairpin, the conformational heterogeneity and fluctuation of human telomeric and promoter DNA quadruplexes, to probe the conformational dynamics and to distinguish folding mechanism of proteins, and to study the gene expression and regulation at single molecule level in living cells. He is a key member of the Cambridge/Imperial team that pioneers the development of the nanopipette technology which is capable of functional imaging of the living cells, controlled delivery and nanowriting, concentrating and trapping of biomolecules, renewable nanosensing and nanodosing. Currently he is investigating gene expression and regulation at single molecule level in live bacterial cells in collaboration with Prof. Martin Buck (Life Sciences), probing DNA/RNA quadruplexes in living cells, developing new quadruplex ligand based therapeutic approach to heart disease in collaboration with Prof. Sian Harding (NHLI), Prof. Ramon Vilar (Chemistry) and Dr. Sylvain Ladame (Bioengineering), and following the early molecular events in Alzheimer’s Disease, such as amyloid-β/metal ions interactions and oligomer seed formation, in search of prevention and cure, in collaboration with Prof. David Klug (Chemistry), Prof. Keith Willsion (Chemistry), Prof. Thomas Knopfel (Brain Science, Medicine) and Prof. Mauricio Barahona (Maths). He has authored/co-authored over 75 peer-reviewed papers (h-index 29, citations 2400) and three patents.

Research Interest

Molecular Medicine