When and where you received your PhD
1998, University of Virginia

Where you did your postdoc:
National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute

Research

We are interested in structural and functional characterization of macromolecular assemblies using three-dimensional cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) and biochemical, biophysical methods. Proteins carry out their cellular functions through formation of dynamic multi-protein complexes and macromolecular assemblies. These complexes or machines are usually too large and/or too heterogeneous for structural solution by X-ray crystallography or NMR spectroscopy methods. CryoEM is uniquely poised for structure determination of large complexes and macromolecular assemblies, and their conformational changes to provide structural snapshots along dynamic processes. Our interest is to combine structural information obtained through cryoEM methods, with biochemical, physiological analysis to understand molecular mechanisms of protein complexes and machines. We currently focus on three research areas: (I) Understanding HIV-1 and host cell interactions during the early stages of virus infection; (II) Eliciting 3D architectures of the chemotaxis receptor signaling complexes and their assemblies to understand the molecular mechanism of signal transduction in bacterial chemotaxis; and (III) Technology development to enhance the capability of cryo-electron tomography for 3D architectures of native mammalian cells at different signaling state.

Publications
(click link in the reference for full pdf of the article)

1. Chen C.-L., Zhang P, and Rosi N.L. (2008). A New Peptide-Based Method for the Design and Synthesis of Nanoparticle Superstructures: Construction of Highly Ordered Gold Nanoparticle Double Helices. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 130(41):13555-7. PMID: 18800838

2. Khursigara C.M.*, Wu X. *, Zhang P, Lefman J., Subramaniam S. (2008). Role of HAMP domains in chemotaxis signaling by bacterial chemoreceptors. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 105(43):16555-60. PMCID: 2570609.

3. Zhang P., Khursigara C.M., Hartnell L.M., Subramaniam S. (2007). Direct visualization of /E.coli/ chemotaxis receptor arrays using cryo-electron microscopy. /Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A/ *104(10)*:3777

4. Zhang P., Weis R. M., Peters P. J., Subramaniam S. (2007). Electron tomography of bacterial chemotaxis receptor assemblies. /Methods Cell Biol./ *79*:373-84