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Affiliations
Director, Electron Imaging Center for NanoMachines (EICN)
Professor, Microbiology, Immunology & Molecular Genetics)
Member, Biochemistry, Biophysics & Structural Biology GPB Home Area, California NanoSystems Institute, Immunity, Microbes & Molecular Pathogenesis GPB Home Area
Research Interests
Structure and function of molecular complexes, viruses and cellular machineries
Professor Hong Zhou’s lab focuses on 3D structural studies of biological complexes using cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) and cryo-electron tomography (cryoET). These emerging methods are particularly suitable for structure determination of large molecular complexes, viruses, cellular machineries and bacterial cells. Recent efforts have focuses on developing and applying advanced cryoEM and cryoET techniques to visualize the dynamic processes of microbial infections and to decipher the mechanisms of fundamental biological processes. Dr. Zhou’s group is at the forefront in pushing the envelope of cryoEM reconstruction to atomic resolution.

Technical Research Interests
Recent advances have given cryo-electron microscopy and single-particle reconstruction (“cryoEM”) an increasingly important role in determining, at 4-7 Å resolution, the 3D structures of macromolecular complexes or biological nanomachines (~150 kDa and 10 nm in dimension). At this resolution, secondary structural elements and bulky amino-acid side chains are readily resolved and can be used to build pseudoatomic models of its subunits for understanding molecular interactions. The emerging method of cryo-electron tomography (cryoET) allows the determination of three dimensional architectures of objects ranging in size from a nanometer to micrometers. These structural methods provide exciting opportunities to determine the structures of microbes and subcellular assemblies that are either too large or too heterogeneous to be investigated by conventional crystallographic or NMR methods. Research in my laboratory aims to understand the mechanisms governing macromolecular functions by pushing the resolution limit of cryoEM to near-atomic resolution and by describing large, pleomorphic, dynamic structures or conformations using the integrative approach of cryoEM and cryoET. The long-term goal of our research is to study their structures and mechanisms of actions by an integrative approach using cryoEM/cryoET, bioinformatics modeling and high performance computing. Current efforts focus on three intermediate projects toward our goal: 1, to develop integrative techniques for atomic resolution cryoEM structural determination; 2, to decipher the mechanisms of actions of multi-enzyme complexes and multi-component nanomachines, such as human pyruvate dehydrogenase complexes; 3, to establish a 3D atlas of key events leading to the assembly and host infection of tumor herpesviruses.

Biography
Z. Hong Zhou, Ph. D. Professor Hong Zhou is a Professor in the Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics department. His group studies the structures and functions of membrane proteins, protein-nucleic acid complexes and microbes using cryo electron microscopy (cryoEM) and cryo electron tomography (cryoET). He combines expertise in structural biology, microbiology, computational biology, and bioinformatics to address fundamental questions in biology. Recent efforts have focused on membrane protein structures and mechanisms of gene replication and transcription. Dr. Zhou was a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, received numerous awards, including the Basil O’Connor Scholar Award, the Established Investigator Award of American Heart Association, the Burton award, and the KH Kuo Award of Distinguished Scientist.

Publications
Zhang Xing, Patel Avnish, Celma Cristina C, Yu Xuekui, Roy Polly, Zhou Z Hong, Atomic model of a nonenveloped virus reveals pH sensors for a coordinated process of cell entry, Nature structural & molecular biology, 2016, 23 (1), 74-80.