Xin Liu, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Dr. Liu is Assistant Professor in the Cecil H. and Ida Green Center for Reproductive Biology Sciences of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He is also Assistant Professor in the Department of Biophysics and W.W. Caruth, Jr. Scholar in Biomedical Research of the UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Dr. Liu did his graduate research in the laboratory of Dr. Ronen Marmorstein at the Wistar Institute and the University of Pennsylvania, where he carried out structural and functional studies on the retinoblastoma and p300/CBP tumor suppressor proteins and their regulation by viral oncoproteins. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2007. Dr. Liu was a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Roger Kornberg at Stanford University from 2008 to 2011, where he studied the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription.

 

Undergraduate

Nanjing University - China (2000), Biochemistry

Graduate School

University of Pennsylvania (2007), Chemistry

• Chromatin and nuclear organization
• Non-coding RNA
• Structural biology
• Transcriptional regulation

Featured Publications

Structural basis of histone H3K27 trimethylation by an active polycomb repressive complex 2.

Jiao L, Liu X Science 2015 Oct 350 6258 aac4383

Initiation complex structure and promoter proofreading.

Liu X, Bushnell DA, Silva DA, Huang X, Kornberg RD Science 2011 Jul 333 6042 633-7

Structure of an RNA polymerase II-TFIIB complex and the transcription initiation mechanism.

Liu X, Bushnell DA, Wang D, Calero G, Kornberg RD Science 2010 Jan 327 5962 206-9

The structural basis of protein acetylation by the p300/CBP transcriptional coactivator.

Liu X, Wang L, Zhao K, Thompson PR, Hwang Y, Marmorstein R, Cole PA Nature 2008 Feb 451 7180 846-50

Structure of the retinoblastoma protein bound to adenovirus E1A reveals the molecular basis for viral oncoprotein inactivation of a tumor suppressor.

Liu X, Marmorstein R Genes Dev. 2007 Nov 21 21 2711-6

Astemizole Arrests the Proliferation of Cancer Cells by Disrupting the EZH2-EED Interaction of Polycomb Repressive Complex 2.

Kong X, Chen L, Jiao L, Jiang X, Lian F, Lu J, Zhu K, Du D, Liu J, Ding H, Zhang N, Shen J, Zheng M, Chen K, Liu X, Jiang H, Luo C J. Med. Chem. 2014 Nov 57 22 9512-21

Catalytic Mechanism of Histone Acetyltransferase p300: From the Proton Transfer to Acetylation Reaction.

Zhang X, Ouyang S, Kong X, Liang Z, Lu J, Zhu K, Zhao D, Zheng M, Jiang H, Liu X, Marmorstein R, Luo C J Phys Chem B 2014 Feb 118 8 2009-19

Architecture of an RNA polymerase II transcription pre-initiation complex.

Murakami K, Elmlund H, Kalisman N, Bushnell DA, Adams CM, Azubel M, Elmlund D, Levi-Kalisman Y, Liu X, Gibbons BJ, Levitt M, Kornberg RD Science 2013 Nov 342 6159 1238724

Formation and Fate of a Complete 31-Protein RNA Polymerase II Transcription Preinitiation Complex.

Murakami K, Calero G, Brown CR, Liu X, Davis RE, Boeger H, Kornberg RD J. Biol. Chem. 2013 Mar 288 9 6325-32

RNA polymerase II transcription: Structure and mechanism.

Liu X, Bushnell DA, Kornberg RD Biochim. Biophys. Acta 2012 Sep

• Rita Allen Scholar
  Rita Allen Foundation (2012)
• CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research
  Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (2011)
• W.W. Caruth, Jr. Scholar in Biomedical Research
  UT Southwestern Medical Center (2011)
• Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellowship
  The Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research (2008)
• Dr. Monica H.M. Shander Award
  The Wistar Institute (2006)