During his lecture, Professor Zhen Huang gave a brief introduction of substitution of nucleic acid oxygen with selenium. As oxygen and selenium are in the same elemental family, the atom specific substitution by replacing nucleotide oxygen with selenium or tellurium has revealed novel chemistry, structure, function and mechanism of nucleic acids and their protein complexes. Professor Zhen Huang also demonstrated that selenium-nucleic acid (SeNA) strategy has great potentials as a general methodology for structure and function studies of RNAs as well as their protein complexes. Moreover, Professor Zhen Huang’ group found that the Se-derivatized RNAs have virtually identical structures to the corresponding natives and the Se-derivatization can facilitate crystallization, phase determination, and high-resolution structure determination. Recently, Professor Huang’s group has determined a RNA/DNA-protein complex via the nucleic acid Se-derivatization and proved that this approach can served as a very useful tool for structural biology research.

This lecture was inspiring and very impressive for all the audience. After the lecture, Professor Zhen Huang and the audience shared their views and interests on the issues of both concern.