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Xiaolian Gao
University of HoustonDepartment: Departments of Chemistry and Biology and BiochemistryAddress: Dept. of Chemistry Science & Research 1, Rm 43 Houston, TX 77204-5641 Phone: 713-743-2805 Fax: 713-743-2709 Email: xgao@uh.edu Web: gaolab.chem.uh.edu |
Education
B.S., Beijing Institute of Chemical Technology (1982)
Ph.D., Rutgers University (1986)
Postdoc, Columbia University
Honors
Research Topic
Biophysical and bioorganic chemistry of nucleic acids; NMR of nuclei acids, proteins, antitumoor antibiotics, and their complexes; development of biochips for genetic screening.
Research Description
Research in this laboratory is at the interfaces of chemistry and biological sciences and our work focuses on two areas: (1) Biological NMR of nucleic acids, proteins, and their complexes with ligand molecules. (2) Microarray BIOCHIP technologies in synthesis and applications.
A broad range of biophysical, computational, chemical and biochemical methods are employed as effective tools for characterization of important biological molecules. Our long term goals are to understand the relationships of function and structure of complex genomes of human and other species.
As chemists, we prefer to approach biological problems at an atomic resolution level, and we are interested in characterizing these systems in great detail. For instance, we use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and computational methods to define three dimensional structures of drug-DNA complexes (Fig 1). This information helps us to understand the action of drug molecules and to design more effective medicinal molecules. Several projects in our laboratory are originated from our interests in the ligand (a general name for drug and potential drug molecules) and nucleic acid complexes. Additionally, we synthesize nucleic acid oligomers and their analogs to facilitate our studies.
We see significantly increased penetration of chemistry into biological sciences in next few years. We are interested in developing and applying new methods to unveil the secrete of genomes (DNA complexes), which are encoded in their structures and functions. Genomes are extremely complex molecular machines, which contain essential information governing our lives. We have developed a novel solution photochemistry for making DNA CHIPs that is used to read DNA sequences, probe DNA structures, and discover base variations/mutations. Thousands of these experiments are performed in parallel in a miniaturized setting (Fig 2). This is a new format of chemistry, involving high throughput combinatorial synthesis, biological sample processing, and bioinformatic computing. We also pursue research projects on general synthesis and applications of BIOCHIPs containing RNA, peptide, and organic molecules.
Selected Publications
- Cohen, D.M., Guthrie, P.H., Gao, X., Sakai, R. and Taegtmeyer, H. (2003). Glutamine cycling in Isolated working rat heart. Am. J. Physiol. Endocrinol. Metab. 285: E1312-1316.
- Kwon, Y., Xi, Z., Kappen, L.S., Goldberg, I.H. and Gao, X. (2003). New complex of post-activated neocarzinostatin chromophore with DNA: bulge DNA binding from the minor groove. Biochemistry 42: 1186-1198.
- Xia, Y., Yee, A., Arrowsmith, C.H. and Gao, X. (2003). 1H(C) and (1)H(N) total NOE correlations in a single 3D NMR experiment. (15)N and (13)C time-sharing in t(1) and t(2) dimensions for simultaneous data acquisition. J Biomol. NMR. 27: 193-203.
- Nagaswamy, U., Gao, X., Martinis, S. A., and Fox, G. E. (2001) NMR structure of a ribosomal RNA hairpin containing a conserved pentaloop. Nucleic Acids Res. 29: 5129-5239.
- Han, X. and Gao, X. (2001) Sequence specific recognition of ligand-DNA complexes studied by NMR. Cur. Med. Chem. Review. 8: 551-579.
- LeProust, E., Pellois, J. P, Yu, P., Zhang, H., Srivannavit, O., Gulari, E., Zhou, X., and Gao, X. (2000) Combinatorial screening method for synthesis optimization on a digital light-controlled microarray platform. J. Comb. Chem. 2: 355-360.
- Yang, X., Hang, X., Cross, C., Bare, S., Sanghvi, Y., and Gao, X. (1999) NMR structure of antisense DNARNA hybrid duplex containing a 3'-CH2-N(CH3)-O5' or an MMI backbone linker. Biochemistry 38: 12586.
- Gao, X., Yu, P. Y., LeProust, E., Sonigo, L., Pellois, J. P., and Zhang, H. (1998)Oligonucleotide synthesis using solution photogenerated acids. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 120: 12698.
Lab Members
Lab Photos
Last edited on: April 11, 2006