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Chair professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Life Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology.
In 1999, graduated from the Department of Biological Science and Technology, Tsinghua University
In 2006, he received his Ph.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco.
In 2014, he joined the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School as an assistant professor, and in 2018, he became an associate professor. The research work focuses on the development of cryo-electron microscopy application methodology, and the combination of bio-electron microscopy and other methods to deeply study the structure and function of biological macromolecules related to human health and disease; breakthroughs have been made in a series of scientific research fields.
Professor Liao Maofu will return to China full-time in July 2022 to join the School of Life Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology. The research directions of the research group include:
(1) Develop bioelectron microscopy methodology to open up new research areas;
(2) Reveal the fine mechanism of the operation of biological macromolecules;
(3) Use of biological structural and mechanistic information to revolutionize medical treatments.
Baez-Nieto D, Allen A, Akers-Campbell S, Yang L, Budnik N, Pupo A, Shin YC, Genovese G, Liao M, Pérez-Palma E, Heyne H, Lal D, Lipscombe D, Pan JQ. Analysing an allelic series of rare missense variants of CACNA1I in a Swedish schizophrenia cohort. Brain. 2022 Jun 3;145(5):1839-1853. doi: 10.1093/brain/awab443. PubMed PMID: 34919654; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC9166571.
Liu D, Thélot FA, Piccirilli JA, Liao M, Yin P. Sub-3-Å cryo-EM structure of RNA enabled by engineered homomeric self-assembly. Nat Methods. 2022 May;19(5):576-585. doi: 10.1038/s41592-022-01455-w. Epub 2022 May 2. PubMed PMID: 35501384.
Arlt H, Sui X, Folger B, Adams C, Chen X, Remme R, Hamprecht FA, DiMaio F, Liao M, Goodman JM, Farese RV Jr, Walther TC. Seipin forms a flexible cage at lipid droplet formation sites. Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2022 Mar;29(3):194-202. doi: 10.1038/s41594-021-00718-y. Epub 2022 Feb 24. PubMed PMID: 35210614; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8930772.
Thélot FA, Zhang W, Song K, Xu C, Huang J, Liao M. Distinct allosteric mechanisms of first-generation MsbA inhibitors. Science. 2021 Oct 29;374(6567):580-585. doi: 10.1126/science.abi9009. Epub 2021 Sep 23. PubMed PMID: 34554829; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC9109178.
Sharma S, Zhou R, Wan L, Feng S, Song K, Xu C, Li Y, Liao M. Mechanism of LolCDE as a molecular extruder of bacterial triacylated lipoproteins. Nat Commun. 2021 Aug 3;12(1):4687. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-24965-1. PubMed PMID: 34344901; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8333309.
Plummer AM, Culbertson AT, Liao M. The ABCs of Sterol Transport. Annu Rev Physiol. 2021 Feb 10;83:153-181. doi: 10.1146/annurev-physiol-031620-094944. Epub 2020 Nov 3. Review. PubMed PMID: 33141631.
Luo M, Zhou W, Patel H, Srivastava AP, Symersky J, Bonar MM, Faraldo-Gómez JD, Liao M, Mueller DM. Bedaquiline inhibits the yeast and human mitochondrial ATP synthases. Commun Biol. 2020 Aug 19;3(1):452. doi: 10.1038/s42003-020-01173-z. PubMed PMID: 32814813; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7438494.
Thélot F, Orlando BJ, Li Y, Liao M. High-resolution views of lipopolysaccharide translocation driven by ABC transporters MsbA and LptB2FGC. Curr Opin Struct Biol. 2020 Aug;63:26-33. doi: 10.1016/j.sbi.2020.03.005. Epub 2020 Apr 23. Review. PubMed PMID: 32335504; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7442718.
Fan M, Zhang J, Tsai CW, Orlando BJ, Rodriguez M, Xu Y, Liao M, Tsai MF, Feng L. Structure and mechanism of the mitochondrial Ca2+ uniporter holocomplex. Nature. 2020 Jun;582(7810):129-133. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2309-6. Epub 2020 May 20. PubMed
