Biography:

Dr. Zhongyu Yang assistant professor in the Chemistry and Biochemistry department at NDSU, was recently awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award. Yang studies the structural information of protein molecules impacted by confined environments. He hopes to better understand how spatial confinement (such as is found in natural cell structures) impacts protein functions. “The majority of our understanding of proteins is in a beaker in a solution but in life, cells are crowded places and that has an impact on molecules such as proteins. Until now, nobody has been able to mimic that environment to comprehensively study the stresses and reactions that occur naturally.” Zhongyu joined NDSU in 2015 after receiving his BS from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2004 and his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2010. He also served as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles through 2015. He notes that around that time the idea came to him to consider the impacts of biological confinements on proteins. “I noticed that there was a knowledge gap in this area and an idea sparked in me to come up with a method to mimic the confined conditions in cells,” he said. Zhongyu’s research involves creating the biological confinement structures and then monitoring any changes to proteins using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, a technology he first learned at Pittsburg and then continued working with at UCLA. Given that only a small number of EPR centers are set up across the country, Zhongyu sees his EPR experience as a unique qualifier to his research. His path to developing this EPR expertise received assistance from his PhD advisor Professor Sunil Saxena, who is the chair of the Chemistry department at the University of Pittsburgh. “After I received my PhD, Sunil sent a recommendation letter to UCLA to help me find a post-doc position in Professor Wayne Hubbell’s research group,” Zhongyu recalls. “I was pleasantly surprised when Wayne offered me the position. The Hubbell group at UCLA is considered as one of the best EPR groups in the world and I was proud to be able to spend nearly five years working with and learning from Wayne.”

Research Interest:

Dr. Zhongyu Yang research interest focus on Elucidating the transport, misfolding, and aggregation of bio medically important disordered polypeptide/biopolymers, Developing (bio)polymeric micelles/(bio) polymersomes as biopolymer cargo confinement chambers and delivery platforms, Understanding biopolymer cargo and polymeric self-assembly interactions.