Ph.D. (Peking University)

B.Sc. (Nankai University)

Dr. Hu, Hongli received her bachelor's degree in Applied Physics from Nankai University in 2008 and her Ph.D. degree in Biophysics from Peking University in 2013. Then she continued her study on the structural biology based on Cryo-electron Electron Microscopy at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health, the University of Michigan, and Stanford University. She conducted extensive collaborative research with Prof. Brian Kobilka and Prof. Robert Lefkowitz of 2012 Nobel Laureates in chemistry at the university of Michigan and Stanford university. She has participated in many important projects and made outstanding contributions to the analysis of high-resolution complex structures of G protein-coupled receptors. She is currently an Assistant Professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of MEDICINE and the Kobilka Institute of Innovative Drug Discovery,The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.

Dr. Hu, Hongli is mainly engaged in the study of G-protein-coupled Receptor (GPCR) complex. She mainly used Cryo Electron Microscopy to obtain the high-resolution structure of GPCR and studied the interaction between membrane proteins and their regulatory proteins which provide an important theoretical basis for the drugs design with targeting of membrane proteins. Since 2017, she has published five articles in top journals such as Nature and Cell, among which she published two articles in Nature as co-first authors. Major achievements include: 3.5 Å Cryo-EM structure of opioid receptor and inhibitory G protein Gi, and Cryo-EM structure of the first full-length molecule of Metabolic Glutamate Receptor (mGlu5) of class C GPCR in different states. Both results were published in Nature, and Dr. Hu, Hongli was the co-first authors. Both articles were highlighted by Nature News & Review.

1. Antoine Koehl*, Hongli Hu*, Dan Feng*, Bingfa Sun, Yan Zhang, Matthew Chu, Tong Sun Kobilka, Els Pardon, Jan Staeyart, Jeffrey Tarrasch, Somnath Dutta, Rasmus Fonseca , William I Weis, Jesper Matthiesen, Georgios Skiniotis, Brian K Kobilka. "Structural Insights into Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor Activation". Nature, 566(2019):79–84

2. Antoine Koehl*, Hongli Hu*, Shoji Maeda*, Yan Zhang, Daniel Hilger, Roger Dawson, Hugues Matile, Sebastien Granier, William I. Weis, Aashish Manglik, Georgios Skiniotis, Brian K. Kobilka. “Structure of the μ Opioid Receptor-Gi Protein Complex”, Nature 558(2018):547-552

3. Zhang, Yan*, Bingfa Sun*, Dan Feng*, Hongli Hu, Matthew Chu, Qianhui Qu, Jeffrey T. Tarrasch et al. "Cryo-EM structure of the activated GLP-1 receptor in complex with a G protein." Nature 546, no. 7657 (2017): 248-253.

4. Kaavya Krishna Kumar*, Moran Shalev-Benami*, Michael J. Robertson, Hongli Hu, Samuel D. Banister, Scott A. Hollingsworth, Naomi R. Latorraca, Hideaki E. Kato, Daniel Hilger, Shoji Maeda, William I. Weis, David L. Farrens, Ron O. Dror, Sanjay V. Malhotra, Brian K. Kobilka, Georgios Skiniotis. “Structure of a Signaling Cannabinoid Receptor 1-G Protein Complex”, Cell (2019), 176 (3), 448-458. e12

5. Qianhui Qu*, Yoh-hei Takahashi*, Yidai Yang, Hongli Hu, Yan Zhang, Joseph S. Brunzelle, Jean-Francois Couture, Ali Shilatifard, Georgios Skiniotis. “Structure and Conformational Dynamics of a COMPASS Histone H3K4 Methyltransferase Complex”, Cell (2018), 174 (5), 1117-1126. e12

6. Shoji Maeda, Antoine Koehl, Hugues Matile, Hongli Hu, Daniel Hilger, Gebhard Schertler, Aashish Manglik, Georgios Skiniotis, Roger Dawson, and Brian Kobilka. “Development of an antibody fragment that stabilizes GPCR/G-protein complexes", Nature Communications 9 (1), 3712 (2018)