Recently, Professor Chen Xi from the School of Chemistry and Materials Science, in collaboration with Professors Wu Yuzhou and Zhong Fangrui from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, published the E-article "Enantioselective [2+2]-cycloadditions with triplet photoenzymes" as a co-corresponding author in the main issue of Nature.
This work combines chemical photosensitizers with protein structures to create novel "triplet photolases" that enrich the functions and applications of light-driven bio-catalysis. It also enables mastery control and provides core technology support for the development of pharmaceutical, pesticide, information and material fields.
Chen Xi received her B.S. degree from Tsinghua University in 2004. She received her Ph.D. degree from National University of Singapore in 2011. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at attached Hospital of University of Oslo from 2012 till the end of 2015. She worked as a research scientist at the National Center for Transitional Molecular Medicine in 2016. She visited Texas State University, El Paso, USA as a visiting scholar in 2017. She joined the School of Chemistry and Materials Science of Northwest University since 2017.
Her research focuses on the structure and function of natural product synthetic enzymes and proteins related to diseases and drugs. Her articles have been published in Nature, The Journal of Biological Chemistry, JCI insight, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Journal of the American Chemical Society. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Chemical Science, and other journals.
The catalytic mechanism of "triplet state photase"