Yuxin Hao

Yuxin Hao is from Beijing, China. She graduated from Capital Medical University with a B.S. degree in Pharmaceutical Science. As an undergraduate, she was involved in the research of nanoparticle-based drug delivery system. Her strong interest in the field of biochemical science led her to continue her studies as a PhD student. She is currently in her fourth year of graduate school at Georgetown University. She is studying the allosteric regulation of protein kinase A (PKA) by single molecule methods. PKA is an important protein involved in the regulation of the cell signaling pathway. The allosteric activation of PKA is triggered by the cooperative binding of cAMP to two cyclic-nucleotide binding domains (CNB-A and CNB-B) located in the R subunit. The goal of her project is to establish a quantitative relationship between protein stability, conformation and the observed cooperativity between CNB domains. She uses optical tweezers force spectroscopy to probe at the single molecule level the stability and conformation of the CNB domains. Her study will provide insights to inter-domain interactions in allosteric proteins and investigate the effects of disease-related mutations in PKA.