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Wah Chiu
Baylor College of MedicineDepartment: Biochemistry and Molecular BiologyAddress: One Baylor Plaza, N420 Alkek Building Houston, TX 77030 Phone: 713-798-6985 Fax: 713-798-8682 Email: wah@bcm.edu Web: ncmi.bcm.edu |
Education
B.A. Physics, University of California, Berkeley (1969)
Ph.D. Biophysics, University of California, Berkeley (1975)
Postdoctoral Fellow, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1979)
Honors
1986 Guggenheim Fellow
1996 Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize
1999 Research Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
2003 Chinese Biophysicist Network Award
2008 Elected Academician, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Research Topic
Structural and Computational Biology of Biological Machines
Research Description
Our research is focused on the development of the high throughput methodology for electron cryomicroscopy and computational methods to solve 3-dimensional structures of macromolecular machines near atomic resolution. The biological applications of our methodology include viruses, chaperonins, ion channels, oligomeric proteins, RNA and protein-nucleic acid complex. Research effort is made to derive functions of the molecular components of a biological machine via computational approaches. We are recently extending our electron imaging applications to whole cells and organelles.
Selected Publications
- Zhou, Z. H., Dougherty, M., Jakana, J., He, J., Rixon, F. J. and Chiu, W. (2000) Seeing the herpesvirus capsid at 8.5 A, Science, 288: 877-880
- Schmid, M.F., Sherman, M., Matsudaira, P. and Chiu, W. (2004). Structure of the acrosomal bundle. Nature, 431, 104-107.
- Ludtke, S. J., Serysheva, II, Hamilton, S. L. and Chiu, W. (2005). The pore structure of the closed RyR1 channel. Structure (Camb) 13: 1203-11.
- Jiang, W., Chang, J., Jakana, J. Weigele, P., King, J. and Chiu, W. (2006). Structure of epsilon15 bacteriophage reveals genome organization and DNA packaging/injection apparatus. Nature, 439: 612-6.
- Ju, T., Baker, M.L. and Chiu, W. (2007). Computing a family of skeletons of volumetric models for shape description. Computer-AIDED Design, 39:352-360.
- Jiang, W., M.L. Baker, J. Jakana, P.R. Weigele, J. King, and W. Chiu (2008). Backbone structure of the infectious epsilon15 virus capsid revealed by electron cryomicroscopy. Nature 451: 1130-4.
Lab Members
Current Graduate Students
Former Grad Students
Current Post Docs
Former Post Docs
Lab Photos
Last edited on: August 18, 2009