Pinghua Liu

Assistant Professor

Bioorganic Chemistry, Bioinorganic Chemistry, and Chemical Biology

• Mechanistic studies on two metallo-proteins (IspG and IspH) in isoprenoid biosynthesis
• Signal transduction pathways in human innate-immune responses triggered by isoprenoid pathway intermediate

  Identification and characterization of proteins involved in histone modifications using genomic, proteomic and biochemical approaches with the initial focuses on histone methylation and demethylation

  Study chromatin structural change and its relationship to the time recording mechanism in circadian clock

Office: SCI 461
E-mail: pinghua@bu.edu

Office hours: By appointment

• B.A. in Chemistry, Nankai University, 1993.
• Masters in Chemical Engineering, Dalian Institute of Chemial Physics (Chinese Academy of Sciences), 1996.
• Ph.D. in Bioorganic Chemistry, University of Minnesota, 2001.
• Postdoctoral Associate, MIT, 2005.

• Guanghua Foundation Fellow, 1990-1992
• Wang Kechang Foundation fellow, 1992-1993

• American Chemical Society

• Enzymology: Enzymatic reaction mechanisms

My research is at the interface between chemistry and biology, focusing on the chemical basis of pathogen and host interactions, as well as the chemical nature of the biological clock. Each project addresses two major areas: first, mechanistic studies of the metallo-proteins in the corresponding process using both biochemical and biophysical methods; second, identification of other components in these two processes using genomic, proteomic, and biochemical approaches. The studies in these projects aim at developing broad-spectrum antibiotics, elucidating the mechanism of isoprenoid biosynthesis pathway intermediate triggered human innate-immune responses, as well as unraveling the time recording mechanism inside the cell and its relationship to both aging and development.

• Liu Group Page