Tae-Hee Lee

Professional Appointments and Affiliations

Professor of Chemistry
Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences
Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Biosciences

Office

230 Chemistry Building
University Park, PA 16802

Education

Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 2004

Post-doc, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 2007

Honors and Awards

Searle Scholar, 2008

Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award, 2007

NIH Pathway to Independence Award, 2006

Research

Single Molecule Biophysics of the Nucleosome, Chromatin, and Gene Regulation

The main theme of our research is investigating the structure and dynamics of the nucleosome and chromatin to elucidate how their structure and dynamics contribute to the mechanisms of gene regulation. We approach our problems with single-molecule methods by controlling and observing how the individual molecules and complexes move and transform during their actions. Our methods include single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smFRET), (co-)localization of fluorophores at an optical super-resolution, single photon correlation spectroscopy, and single-molecule force microscopy with optical tweezers.

Studying the dynamics of biological macromolecular complexes is essential to understanding their behavior and function. Studying dynamically and asynchronously transforming complexes through a multi-step process requires a capability of monitoring sub-population dynamics inaccessible from ensemble-averaging approaches. Single-molecule spectroscopy and microscopy provide efficient ways to address these problems. My research program focuses on the structure and dynamics of the nucleosome, chromatosome, nucleosome arrays, and various enzymes acting on the nucleosome such as chromatin remodelers and RNA polymerase II. We investigate these complexes to understand what roles they play in regulating the genome transactions at the nucleosome and the nucleosome-array levels. My research program is very much interdisciplinary across physical chemistry, analytical chemistry, biochemistry, molecular/structural/cellular biology, and nanoscale science/engineering.

Positions Available

Biophysics post-doc position openings

I am currently looking for post-doctoral researchers. Individuals trained in biological sciences or experimental biophysics are strongly encouraged to apply. Enthusiastic scientists trained in molecular spectroscopy/microscopy searching for career opportunities in single-molecule biophysics are also welcome to apply. Potential roles in the lab include routine work in cellular/molecular biology, application and/or development of spectroscopic/microscopic techniques.

If interested, please send your CV to thlee@psu.edu.

Selected Publications

Google Scholar Page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Vd7Mg3oAAAAJ&hl=en

(*corresponding author)

Cathy J. Spangler, Satya P. Yadav, Dongxu Li, Carinne N. Geil, Charlotte B. Smith, Gang Greg Wang*, Tae-Hee Lee*, and Robert K. McGinty*, DOT1L activity in leukemia cells requires interaction with ubiquitylated H2B that promotes productive nucleosome binding, Cell Rep. 38 110369 (2022)

Shi Ho Kim and Tae-Hee Lee*, Conformational dynamics of poly(T) single-stranded DNA at the single-molecule level, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 12 4576 (2021)

S Kim, Y Liu, C Hoelzel, X Zhang*, and Tae-Hee Lee*, Super-resolution optical lithography with DNA, Nano Lett. 19 6035 (2019)

Jaehyoun Lee and Tae-Hee Lee*, How protein binding sensitizes the nucleosome to histone acetylation, ACS Chem. Biol. 15 506 (2019)

S Brahma, MI Udugama, J Kim, A Hada, SK Bhardwaj, SG Hailu, Tae-Hee Lee*, Blaine Bartholomew*, INO80 exchanges H2A.Z for H2A by translocating on DNA proximal to histone dimers, Nat. Commun. 8 15161 (2017)

Samantha Falk+, Jaehyoun Lee+, Nicolina Sekulic, Michael Sennett, Tae-Hee Lee*, and Ben Black*, CENP-C directs the CENP-A nucleosome structural transition primarily through sliding of DNA gyres, Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 23 204 (2016)

Sijie Wei, Samantha Falk, Ben Black, and Tae-Hee Lee*, A novel hybrid single molecule approach reveals spontaneous DNA motion in the nucleosome, Nucleic Acids Res. 43 e111 (2015).

Ju Yeon Lee and Tae-Hee Lee*, Effects of DNA methylation on the structure of nucleosomes, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 134 173 (2012).

John Choy and Tae-Hee Lee*, Dynamics of nucleosomes at single molecule resolution, Trends. Biochem. Sci. 37 425 (2012)

Ju Yeon Lee, Sijie Wei and Tae-Hee Lee*, Effects of histone acetylation by Piccolo NuA4 on the structure of a nucleosome and the interactions between two nucleosomes, J. Biol. Chem. 286 11099 (2011)

Chen-Yu Liu, Mohd Tanvir Qureshi and Tae-Hee Lee*, Interaction strengths between the ribosome and tRNA at various steps of translocation, Biophys. J. 100 2201 (2011)

Ravindra Kumar, Vishal Nahine, Padmaja Mishra, Stephen Benkovic and Tae-Hee Lee*, Stepwise loading of yeast clamp revealed by ensemble and single-molecule studies, PNAS 107 19736 (2010)

Tae-Hee Lee*, Extracting Kinetics Information from Single-Molecule Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer Data Using Hidden Markov Models, J. Phys. Chem. B 113 11535 (2009)