On the afternoon of May 24, 2017, Prof. Liang Tong, Director of the Department of Biological Sciences of Columbia University, visited the Institute of Biophysics with the invitation of Prof. Rui-ming Xu and gave a Bei Shizhang Lecture entitled "Structure and function of metabolic enzymes and relevance to human health".
Professor Liang Tong focuses on the structural biologcal research of the key enzymes involved in fatty acid and carbohydrate metabolism, and has made significant achievements in this field. Acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) is a key enzyme in fatty acid metabolism and is an attractivetarget for drug discovery against diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other health problems. ACC, which contains three components, biotin carboxylase (BC) domain, biotin carboxyl carrier protein (BCCP) domain and carboxy transferase (CT) domain, catalyzes the carboxylation of acetyl-CoA, promotes the biosynthesis of fatty acid and inhibits fatty acid oxidation, and thus causes obesity. Therefore, to explore the structure and function of these components and holoenzyme is of great significance for human health. Liang Tong’s laboratory determined the crystal structure of yeast full length ACC dimer, explained why the BC dimer has activity and monomer has not, and revealed the molecular mechanism of the inhibition of ACC by the natural produce soraphen A and phosphorylation of a Ser residues in ACC. And the mechanism was verified by electron microscopy results.
After the lecture, Prof. Liang Tong and the audience shared their views on the issues of common interest.