Cho Research Group

Engineered proteins to study cells, detect and treat disease

We engineer proteins to create tools for controlling and observing biological processes. We apply thermodynamics, reaction kinetics, and transport phenomena to design assays for characterizing biomolecules, and screen for desired function. We apply our tools to decipher protein functions in cells and identify function of specific cell types in multicellular systems. We aim to identify mechanisms that lead to complex biological system function and its disorders, and novel therapeutic targets.

News

January 2022 - Guilherme passed the qualifying exam. Congratulations!

November 2021 - Guilherme joined the group as a PhD student. Welcome!

November 2021 - Monika gave a presentation on her yeast biopanning work at AIChE.

September 2021 - Rayne Santiago joined the group as an undergraduate researcher. Welcome!

April 2021 - Shiyao successfully defended her PhD thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Wang!

February 2021 - Monika's review paper on Phospho-tau antibodies and immunoassays was accepted for publication in Antibody Therapeutics.

January 2021 - Azady's paper on Sinorhizobium optogenetics was accepted for publication in ACS Synthetic Biology.

March 2020 - Our group received a new grant from NIH - NIA.

January 2020 - Erik Ammermann passed his PhD qualifying exam. Congratuations!

Yeast biopanning for detecting antibody binding to site-specific phosphorylations in tau (bioRxiv, 2022)

Timescale of degradation-driven protein level fluctuation in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae (bioRxiv, 2021)

High specificity antibodies and detection methods for quantifying phosphorylated tau from clinical samples (Antibody Therapeutics, 2021)

Optogenetics in Sinorhizobium meliloti enables spatial control of exopolysaccharide production and biofilm structure (ACS Synthetic Biology, 2021)

Yeast surface display of full-length human microtubule-associated protein tau (Biotechnology Progress, 2020)

High specificity of widely used phospho‐tau antibodies validated using a quantitative whole‐cell based assay (Journal of Neurochemistry, 2020)

Multidimensional screening yields channelrhodopsin variants having improved photocurrent and order-of-magnitude reductions in calcium and proton currents (Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2019)

Directed Evolution of a Picomolar Affinity High Specificity Antibody Targeting Phosphorylated Tau (Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2018)