ZIP Metal Ion Transporters

Prof. Jian Hu is a structural biologist and protein chemist with 12 years of research experience and excellent track record in prestigious academic institutions. He has conducted structure-function research on different proteins, especially membrane proteins, by employing a wide variety of biophysical and biochemical approaches. He is currently an Associate Professor in Michigan State University, College of Natural Science

• Unit I. Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology1. Structure determination of a bacterial ZIP in lipidic cubic phase2. Cell-based metal transport assay for animal and plant ZIPs3. Measurement of metal binding affinity and transport activity in ZIP transporters using spectroscopic methods　4. Considerations in production of the (prokaryotic)  ZIP family transporters for sturcural and functional studies5. Metal-protein interactions investigated using model systems: thermodynamic, spectroscopic and computational methods6. Expression, purification and crystallization of the extracellular domain of a mammalian ZIP47. Getting Zinc Into and Out of Cells8. In-silico modeling of ZIP9 (TBD)Georgios Scheiner-BobisUnit II. Cellular Function and Regulation9. Methods to visualise zinc transporter proteins of the SLC39A family in cells10. Assessing metal ion transporting activity of ZIPs: intracellular zinc and iron detection11. In vitro studies for studying manganese transport and homeostasis12. In vitro studies to evaluate zinc transport ability of ZIPs through analyzing ZNT1 and MT expression responses13. The optimized method to detect mouse erythrocyte membrane ZIP metal transporters by immunoblotting　analysis14. Dynamic internalization and trafficking of zinc transporter15. Assessing the impact of varying zinc levels in the transcription profiles of human neurons16. Quantifying homomeric and heteromeric ZIP complexes using fluorescence correlation and fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy17. ZIP9-directed androgenic tetra peptides (TBD)