Yanxin Liu

Seeing is Believing: Combating Viral Infection at Atomic Resolution Using Cryo-electron Microscopy and Computational Microscopy

Abstract

Humans have been fighting infectious viruses over a long period of time. In the last 3 years, SARS-CoV-2 has taken the world by storm and changed many aspects of our lives for the foreseeable future. To combat these deadly viruses, a mechanistic understanding of virus-host interaction is required, including viral infection, replication, and release. I will introduce the recent advances in the development of two powerful Nobel-Prize winning microscopes, namely cryo-electron microscope (cryo-EM) and supercomputer-based computational microscope, which enabled the scientists to quickly respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. Cryo-EM delivers the atomic-resolution structures of biomolecular complexes formed between viral proteins and host proteins, such as the Spike-ACE2 complex that is responsible for SARS-CoV-2 entering the human cell. The computational microscope allows the study of virus and protein dynamics through computer simulations. By combining and further developing these two microscopes, we will not only achieve a better understanding of virology at molecular level, but also be better prepared to fight the next pandemics.

About the Speaker

Dr. Yanxin Liu is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, with a joint appointment in the UMD Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry & Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research. His research group focuses on the molecular and structural understanding of protein complexes that are related to human diseases, by employing an integrative approach that combines biophysics, biochemistry, structural biology, and computational modeling. In particular, he specialized in emerging technologies of high-resolution single-particle cryo-electron microscopy, cryo-electron tomography, and large-scale atomistic molecular dynamics simulation. He obtained his bachelor degree in Applied Physics from the Xi’an Jiaotong University in China, and Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, respectively. He received postdoctoral training in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California San Francisco. His Ph.D. thesis focused on long-timescale molecular dynamic simulation using supercomputers and parallel computing. His postdoctoral research focused on the mechanistic understanding of the molecular chaperone machinery. For his Ph.D. work, he received the Student Research Achievement Award from the Biophysical Society and the Chemical Computing Group Excellence Award from the American Chemical Society. He is a recipient of postdoctoral fellowships from the Howard Hugh Medical Institute, the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, and the American Heart Association.