David Ruchien Liu

David Ruchien Liu is professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University,[1] an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.[2] and a Senior Associate Member of the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT.[3]

Biography

Liu was born in Riverside, California in 1973, and attended Riverside Poly High School. He received a B.S. in Chemistry from Harvard College in 1994, where he performed undergraduate research with Nobel Laureate Professor E. J. Corey, and then a Ph.D. with Peter G. Schultz at the University of California, Berkeley in 1999. That year, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University; he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2003 and to Full Professor in 2005. He was appointed as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in 2005.

Research

Liu’s research focuses on the application of evolutionary principles to the discovery of functional small molecules and macromolecules. His laboratory developed methods including DNA-templated synthesis[4] to apply components of biological evolution such as translation, selection, and replication to non-canonically evolvable systems, including synthetic small molecules and synthetic polymers. Recently, his work has led to the discovery of supercharged proteins, a novel class of naturally occurring and engineered proteins capable of mediating the transduction of protein- or nucleic acid cargo into mammalian cells in vitro and in vivo.[5] His group has also developed a method for the continuous directed evolution of proteins and nucleic acids known as phage-assisted continuous evolution (PACE).[6] PACE accelerates the speed of protein evolution by approximately 100-fold over previous methods.

Liu has received the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2000), the Searle Scholars Award (2000),[7] the NSF CAREER Award (2001), the Beckman Young Investigators Award (2002),[8] the Sloan Foundation Fellowship (2002),[9] the AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals Excellence in Chemistry Award (2003),[10] the Glaxo-Smith-Kline Chemistry Scholar Award (2004), the American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Young Scholar Award (2004) [11] and the American Chemical Society Pure Chemistry Award (2006)[12]

References

  1. ↑ "The Liu Lab Website"
  2. ↑ "HHMI Scientist Bio: David R. Liu"
  3. ↑ "Broad Associate Members List"
  4. ↑ "Evolutionary Oomph: Researchers describe way to create synthetic polymers using genetic coding in DNA"
  5. ↑ "Gene transfer: Supercharging through the cell membrane"
  6. ↑ "High speed evolution aids drug development"
  7. ↑ "Searle Scholars Program: David R. Liu"
  8. ↑ "Beckman Young Investigator Awards for 2002"
  9. ↑ [http://www.sloan.org/sloan-research-fellowships/past-fellows/?tx_sloangrants_sloanfellows[page]=&tx_sloangrants_sloanfellows[lastPage]=193&tx_sloangrants_sloanfellows[sortby]=4&tx_sloangrants_sloanfellows[order]=1&tx_sloangrants_sloanfellows[search]=&tx_sloangrants_sloanfellows[controller]=Fellows&cHash=f994e437c4348687115aa7ee22c51b3d "Sloan Foundation Fellows List"]
  10. ↑ "PR Newswire: Astrazeneca 2003 Excellence in Chemistry Awards"
  11. ↑ "ACS Arthur C. Cope Young Scholar Awards"
  12. ↑ "ACS Pure Chemistry Awards".