Graduate Students:
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Minfei Su
Chemistry and Biochemistry Department
E-mail: minfei.su@my.ndsu.edu
I have two research projects. The goal of my first project is to investigate the determinants of differential specificity of herpesvirus and mammalian Bcl-2s, in order to obtain information that can be used in the design of inhibitors specific to viral Bcl-2s. These viral Bcl-2s reactivation from latency and persistent replication in immunocompromised hosts, and may increase the likelihood of oncogenic transformation of infected cells.The goal of my second project is to investigate the structure and mechanism of UVRAG, a protein essential for autophagy. I am currently focusing on the first three domains of UVRAG, and their interactions with other autophagy proteins. |
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Yang Mei
Cell and Molecular Biology Program
E-mail: yang.mei@my.ndsu.edu
My main research focus is Beclin 1, an autophagy-associated protein, which is a key component of the class III phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) complex, required for autophagasome formation. Beclin 1 has several domains, so we are investigating the structure and mechanism of different domain constructs by over-expression, purification followed by structural, biophysical and mutagenic analyses. Besides this, I am also investigating the presence of intrinsically disordered domains in the 65 different autophagy effector and regulatory proteins that have been identified to date.
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