At Prof. Can Li’s invitation, Prof. Yi Lu, from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, visited DICP on July 17. He gave a lecture entitled “Designing Metalloenzymes: Exploring the Roles of Non-covalent Interactions in the Secondary Sphere in Efficient Biocatalysis for Renewable Energy”. Prof. Zongbao (Kent) Zhao hosted the lecture.
In Prof. Lu’s lecture, he addressed how to design functional metalloenzyme for sustainable energy conversion with a case study of O2 reduction. Learning from Cytochrome C oxidase (CcO), Prof. Lu’s group engineered azurin and myoglobin into functional metalloproteins with diverse redox activity. They have demonstrated redox potential tuning of azurin can be realized through fine-tuning of three non-covalent secondary coordination sphere interactions: hydrophobicity, hydrogen-bonding, and peptide bond oxygen interactions. After the lecture, Prof. Lu visited Laboratory of Biotechnology, State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics, Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy and State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, and had in-depth discussions with related researchers.
Introduction of Prof. Yi Lu
Professor Yi Lu Visits DICP
Prof. Yi Lu received his B.S. degree from Peking University in 1986, and Ph.D. degree from University of California at Los Angeles in 1992. Prof. Lu started his own independent career in the Department of Chemistry at UIUC since 1994. He is now Jay and Ann Schenck Professor of Chemistry in the Departments of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Bioengineering and Materials Science and Engineering. His research interests lie at the interface between chemistry and biology. His group is developing new chemical approaches to provide deeper insight into biological systems. At the same time, they take advantage of recently developed biological tools to advance many areas in chemistry. Specific areas of current interests include a) design and engineering of functional metalloproteins as environmentally benign catalysis in renewable energy generation and pharmaceuticals; b) Fundamental understanding of DNAzymes and their applications in environmental monitoring, medical diagnostics, and targeted drug delivery; and c) Employing principles from biology for directed assembly of nanomaterials with controlled morphologies and its applications in imaging and medicine.
Prof. Lu has received numerous research and teaching awards, including the Royal Society of Chemistry Applied Inorganic Chemistry Award (2015), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC, 2015), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2007), Early Career Award, Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (2007), Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor Award (2002), Camile Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (1999), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (1998), Research Corporation Cottrell Scholars Award (1997), and the Beckman Young Investigators Award (1996). Prof. Lu is also an inventor, with more than 20 US and international patents and an entrepreneur, as a co-founder of companies for environmental monitoring (www.ANDalyze.com) and medical diagnostics (www.GlucoSentient.com). (Text/Guoqing Jia and Yinghao Li; Photo/Mingpan Cheng)