Jin Zhang, professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego, will deliver an Apex Lecture on Thursday, April 17, at 3:00 p.m. in 1220 MRB III. The title of her talk is, “Illuminating the Biochemical Activity Architecture of the Cell.” A reception will follow the lecture, which is co-sponsored by the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, at 4:00 p.m. in the MRB III first-floor atrium.
Zhang is a professor of pharmacology, chemistry and biochemistry, and biomedical engineering at the University of California, San Diego. She received her bachelor of science in chemistry from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1995 and completed her Ph.D. with David G. Lynn at the University of Chicago in 2000. She conducted postdoctoral research with Roger Y. Tsien and Susan S. Taylor atUCSD, then joined the faculty in the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 2003.
At Johns Hopkins, she was a member of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. She was promoted to full professor in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience and the departments of pharmacology and molecular sciences and chemical and biomolecular engineering in 2013.
In 2015, Zhang relocated her lab to UCSD, where she is now a professor in the departments of pharmacology, bioengineering, and chemistry and biochemistry. She is a member of the Moores Cancer Center. Zhang is also director and cofounder of BioPAC, the Bio-Optical Probe Advancement Center.
The Zang lab is interested in understanding how cells, the basic units of life, sense changing environments and orchestrate specific responses to carry out life processes. They are investigating the molecular mechanisms and functional roles of such spatiotemporal regulation by taking a “native biochemistry” approach. Her lab has developed a series of molecular tools and fluorescence imaging technologies to interrogate signaling enzymes in their native contexts.
Zhang, in collaboration with Heng Zhu’s and Jiang Qian’s laboratories at Johns Hopkins, developed a new strategy, CEASAR, based on functional protein microarrays and bioinformatics to experimentally identify substrates for 289 unique kinases, resulting in 3,656 high-quality KSRs. They constructed a high-resolution map of phosphorylation networks that connects 230 kinases to 2,591 in vivo phosphorylation sites on 652 substrates.
Lecture abstract
The complexity and specificity of cellular processes, such as signal transduction and metabolism, require spatial microcompartmentation and dynamic modulation of the underlying biochemical activities. The Zhang lab hypothesizes that cellular biochemical activities are spatially organized into an “activity architecture” and that reorganization and restructuring of this activity architecture lead to disease.
In this talk, Zhang will introduce a series of genetically encoded or chemigenetic fluorescent biosensors that her lab has developed to monitor biochemical events in living cells. She will then present a couple of studies where her lab combines quantitative fluorescence imaging with targeted perturbations, as well as biochemical and functional assays to probe the biochemical activity architecture of the cell.
About the Apex Lecture Series
There are major inflection points in biomedical discovery that create new fields, new ideas, and new opportunities to impact human health. To engage with global researchers contributing to these inflection points, the Vanderbilt School of Medicine Basic Sciences launched the Apex Lecture Series in 2023. This school-wide seminar series brings scientists who are influencing the trajectory of their fields to engage with our scientific community on campus.