At the invitation of the State Key Laboratory of Elemento-Organic Chemistry, Professor Lei Liu of Tsinghua University visited Nankai Lectureship on Organic Chemistry on April 28, 2021. After interacting with the teachers and students of the SKLEOC, he gave an academic report entitled "Explorations of Protein Chemical Synthesis" in the academic lecture hall of ShiXian Building at 4 p.m.
Before the academic report, Prof. Chunming Cui first presented Prof. Liu with the certificate of " Nankai University Lectureship on Organic Chemistry" on behalf of the SKLEOC. In the report, Prof. Liu mainly introduced their research team's exploration in protein synthesis. By using ingenious metaphor, Prof. Liu explained the profound knowledge of protein chemistry in simple terms, which brought audience an academic and enlightening report. After the report, teachers and students present had a warm and deeply discussion with Prof. Liu on the issues of interest and the details of the research.
Prof. Liu graduated from the Department of chemistry, University of science and Technology of China in 1999. He received his doctorate from the Department of chemistry, Columbia University in 2004, and then engaged in postdoctoral research in Scripps Institute. In 2007, he joined the Department of Chemistry of Tsinghua University, mainly engaged in the research of protein chemical synthesis. He discovered protein hydrazide ligation reaction, developed reversible modification strategy of protein skeleton, established new methods of protein chemical synthesis, and completed the chemical synthesis of polyubiquitin, modified histone, nucleic acid polymerase, cell chemokines and other proteins, which breaks through the limitations of biological methods to prepare protein, expands the application of chemical synthetic protein in biochemistry, structural biology, pharmacy and other aspects, and also carries out the exploration of mirror synthetic biology. He has won the Tan Kah Kee Youth Science Award, the Second Prize of National Natural Science Award, Scientific Exploration Award, etc.
