Our major research program focuses on the structural and functional studies of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs), a family of cell surface receptors that play a key role in regulating normal cellular processes. Defects in RTK activation are causative in many cancers and other diseases and are targeted by many drugs. To date, many crystal structures for individual domains of RTKs are available. However, structural information on full-length RTKs, either in their apo- or ligand-bound multimeric states, has been elusive because these elongated and conformationally dynamic single-pass transmembrane proteins are difficult to crystalize. Thus, the central question of how information is relayed across plasma membrane by these important proteins remains unanswered.

Besides RTKs and ion channels, we are also interested in studying other types of integral transmembrane proteins that play critical roles in cellular signaling, such as STING. The cGAS-cGAMP-STING pathway is a universal mechanism for different type of cells to fight microbial infection. As STING is a small membrane protein having a molecular weight of only ~80 kDa, using cryo-EM to solve the structure of this size of membrane protein is a major challenge. Through the collaboration with Xuewu Zhang and James Chen labs, we determined the high resolution structures of full-length STING with and without cGAMP bound, as well as in the higher order oligomeric state, by using the Volta phase plate.