Dr. Lu's research mainly focus on protein degradation, like transcription and translation, is  highly precise and efficient. His lab aims to understand how accurate control of protein degradation is achieved and how failures of control contribute to neurodegeneration and aging. They use single-molecule techniques, cryo-EM and MD simulations to study how the proteasome decodes ubiquitin chain configurations.

Regulatory protein degradation is mediated by the 26S proteasome in all eukaryotic species. Exquisite structural features of the proteasome underlie the precise recognition of substrates based on ubiquitin configurations, before engaging the substrates into continuous and efficient translocation. In this talk, I will describe how we applied single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy to reveal the mechanism of degradation specificity, and our efforts of resolving high-resolution structures of the proteasome using cryo-electron microscopy to understand the mysterious translocation process.