Name: Lei Lu

Email：lei_lu@tsinghua.edu.cn

Group website：https://lonelu.github.io

Research interest:

The long-term research objective is to develop de novo protein design methodologies, ultimately aiming to create practical artificial proteins for developing innovative therapeutic approaches. Our research group conducts both computational and experimental studies. The main research directions include:

1. De novo design of binding proteins for drugs, metals, glycans, and peptides
We focus on protein-molecule interactions, employing database search methods combined with novel protein design tools for designing binding proteins.

2. Computational method development and application for enzyme design
Designing enzymes to catalyze specific chemical reactions through new databases and developing deep learning approaches

3. Development of new proteomics technologies and algorithms
Creating novel proteomics technologies based on protein/enzyme design, apply to limited protease proteomics and proximity proteomics etc, ultimately enabling innovative drug screening and biomarker discovery.

Selected Publications： 

1. Lu L,  Gou X, Tan S, Man S, Yang H, Zhong X, Gazgalis D, Valdiviezo J, Jo H, Wu Y, Diolaiti M, Ashworth A, Polizzi N, & DeGrado W. (2024) De novo design of drug-binding proteins with predictable binding energy and specificity.  Science, 384, 106-112.

2. Lu L, Scalf M, Shortreed M, Smith L. (2021) Mesh fragmentation improves dissociation efficiency in top-down proteomics. Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, 23;32(6):1319-25.

3.  Lu L#,  Riley N#, Shortreed M, Bertozzi C & Smith L (2020). O-Pair Search with MetaMorpheus for O-glycopeptide Characterization. Nature Methods, 17, 1133-1138. (# co-first authors)

4. Lu L, Millikin R, Solntsev S, Rolfs Z, Scalf M, Shortreed M, & Smith L. (2018). Identification of MS-cleavable and noncleavable chemically cross-linked peptides with MetaMorpheus. Journal of Proteome Research, 17(7), 2370-2376.