Title: Mapping Glycan – Protein Interactions in Cells
Abstract: Protein glycoconjugates, protein products at cell surface modified with glycan post-translational modifications, are often considered untamable biomolecules. A single protein glycoconjugate can exist as a mixture of heterogeneous unique protein glycoforms in living cells, resulting in innumerable possible interactions with glycan-binding proteins. These individual interactions can play diverse roles in orchestrating physiology and disease. However, current approaches to describe protein glycoconjugates and their interactions are limited, restraining our understanding of the consequent important and often critical functions they play. Using interdisciplinary approaches rooted in chemical biology and high-resolution mass spectrometry, I will outline our efforts to dismantle the complexity of protein glycoconjugates. These endeavors include the fabrication of defined proteoglycans to control cancer cell adhesion on matrices and the elucidation of the proteome-wide interactions of glycan-binding proteins and glycoproteins, as well as the development of synthetic small molecules that differentially engage various protein glycoforms.
Bio: Dr. Mia Huang is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Scripps Research. She obtained her B.A. in Chemistry from the City University of New York Queens College in 2007 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2012 from New York University. At NYU, she worked with Prof. Kent Kirshenbaum to design peptidomimetic peptoid oligomers that could mimic the biological functions of natural proteins. After postdoctoral work at Yale University working on heterobifunctional antibody recruiting molecules, she became interested in the field of glycoscience, and she performed additional postdoctoral work with Kamil Godula at UC San Diego as a NIH K99 Pathway to Independence Award Fellow (2017). She started her independent career at Scripps Research in 2018, and her is lab is developing strategies to capture protein-glycan interactions in cells to further our molecular understanding of how glycans carry out sophisticated biological functions. Dr. Huang has been awarded an NIGMS MIRA award (2021), the David Gin Young Investigator Award (2023), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry (2023), the Ono Pharma Breakthrough Science Award (2023), the Conrad Prebys Foundation Research Heroes Award, and a Szarek Lectureship Award from Queen’s University (2024).
Host: Prof. Jeff Martell