This month, the American Chemical Society's Biochemistry journal will run a month-long special edition featuring the "44 Faces of the Future of Biochemistry."
Christina Woo, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, is one of these 44.
On the Magazine's cover, Christina shares recognition with a collage of promising junior biochemists from across the country. For their first issue, the journal presents profiles on each scholar and their current research pursuits, challenges, and goals. Then, throughout January (and beyond), the journal will publish papers from each. Read Christina's profile below and keep an eye out for her upcoming publication in Biochemistry.
Christina Woo
Assistant Professor, Harvard University
B.A. Wellesley College
Ph.D. Yale University
The Woo lab studies how small molecules influence protein function using a combination of organic chemistry, chemical biology, and mass spectrometry. Small molecules are one of the primary means of regulating biology by both native cellular processes (e.g., post-translational modifications) and humans (e.g., small molecule therapeutics).
My lab is involved in developing general approaches to directly characterize and engineer these interactions. We are creating chemical technologies that enable global mapping of small molecule binding sites to proteins. In parallel, we are developing new tools to probe and engineer cellular pathways that rely on small molecule signaling.
We will apply these methods to bioactive small molecules to gain insight into the biological terrain under a small molecule’s purview that is overlooked with existing technologies.
