Professional Appointments and Affiliations

Associate Professor of Chemistry

Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Paul Berg Early Career Professorship in the Eberly College of Science

Office 

224 Chemistry Building
University Park, PA 16802

Mailing Address

104 Chemistry Building

Education

Ph.D. Chemistry, California Institute of Technology, 2010

M.S. Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2004

B.S. Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, 2001

Honors and Awards

Scialog Fellow, 2018

Sloan Research Fellow, 2018

The Lloyd and Dottie Huck Early Career Award, 2015-16

The Burrough Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface, 2014-19

American Chemical Society National Award – Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry, 2012

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellowship Award, 2011 (declined)

The Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship Award, 2011-14 (selected as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow)

Springer Thesis Award, 2010

Herbert Newby McCoy Award of Caltech, 2010

Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad, 2009

The Ulric B. and Evelyn L. Bray Endowment Fellowship, 2006-08

Distinguished Thesis Award in Liaoning Province, China, 2005

The Liu Yonglin Award, 2000

Selected Publications

“A fluorogenic AggTag method based on Halo- and SNAP-tag to simultaneously detect the aggregation of two proteins in live cells”, submitted

M. Fares and X. Zhang* “Quantification of cellular proteostasis in live cells using the AgHalo sensors“, Curr. Protoc. Chem. Biol., 2018:e58.

K.H. Jung, M. Fares, L.S. Grainger, C.H. Wolstenholme, A. Hou‡, Y. Liu, X. Zhang*, “A SNAP-tag fluorogenic probe mimicking the chromophore of the red fluorescent protein Kaede“, Org. Biomol. Chem., accepted. Part of New Talent Special Issue.

H. Hu, C.H. Wolstenholme, X. Zhang*, X.S. Li*, “Inverted solvatochromic stokes shift in GFP-like chromophores with extended conjugation“, Chin. J. Chem. Phys., 31 (2018), 599-607.

Y. Liu, K. Miao‡, Y. Li, M. Fares, S. Chen‡, X. Zhang* “A HaloTag-based multi-color fluorogenic sensor visualizes and quantifies proteome stress in live cells using solvatochromic and molecular rotor-based fluorophores“, Biochemistry, 57 (2018), 4663-4674.

B.I. Leach, X. Zhang, J.W. Kelly, H.J. Dyson, P.E. Wright*, “NMR measurements reveal the structural basis of transthyretin destabilization by pathogenic mutations“, Biochemistry, 57 (2018), 4421-4430.

Y. Liu, C.H. Wolstenholme, G. Carter, H. Liu, H. Hu, L.S. Grainger, K. Miao‡, M. Fares, C.A. Hoelzel, H. Yennawar, G. Ning, M. Du, L. Bai, X. Li, X. Zhang*, “Modulation of fluorescent protein chromophores to detect protein aggregation with turn-on fluorescence“, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 140 (2018), 7381-7384.

A. Pedley, G. Karras, X. Zhang, S. Lindquist, S. Benkovic*, “The role of HSP90 in the regulation of de novo purine biosynthesis“, Biochemistry, 57 (2018), 3217-3221.

Y. Liu, M. Fares, X. Zhang*, “Monitoring proteome stress in live cells using HaloTag-based fluorogenic sensor”, Methods in Molecular Biology: Protein Misfolding Diseases, 2018, invited book chapter.

X. Li, T. Wang, P. Duan, M. Baldini, H. Huang, B. Chen, S. Juhl, D. Koeplinger, V. Crespi, K. Schmidt-Rohr, R. Hoffmann, N. Alem, M. Guthrie, X. Zhang, J. Badding*, “Carbon nitride nanothread crystals derived from pyridine”, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 140 (2018), 4969-4972.

Y. Liu and X. Zhang*, “Heat shock protein reports on proteome stress”, Biotechnology J, 13 (2018), 1800039.

M. Fares, Y. Li, Y. Liu, K. Miao‡, Z. Gao‡, Y. Zhai‡, X. Zhang*, “A molecular rotor-based Halo-tag ligand enables a fluorogenic proteome stress sensor to detect protein misfolding in mildly stressed proteome“, Bioconjutate Chem, 29 (2018), 215-224.

Y. Liu, M. Fares, N. P. Dunham, Z. Gao‡, K. Miao‡, X. Jiang, S. S. Bollinger‡, A. K. Boal, X. Zhang*, “AgHalo: A facile fluorogenic sensor to detect drug induced proteome stress“, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 56 (2017), 8672-8676. 

Y. Liu, K. Miao‡, N.P. Dunham, H. Liu, M. Fares, X. Li, A.B. Boal, X. Zhang*, “The cation-π interaction enables a Halo-Tag fluorogenic probe for fast no-wash live cell imaging and gel-free protein quantification“, Biochemistry, 56 (2017), 1585-1595, (ACS Editor’s Choice). Featured by Viewpoint in Biochemistry.