Jinjun Gao, Ph.D.

              Assistant Professor, Principal Investigator

              Email: gaojinjun@pku.edu.cn

              Office: Room 210, Building F-East

Dr. Gao is currently a tenure-track assistant professor and principal investigator at the School of Chemical Biology&Biotechnology at Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School. He obtained his Ph.D. from Peking University in 2019 under the guidance of Prof. Chu Wang, specializing in chemoproteomics and computational proteomics. During this period, he developed several innovative proteomics methods, such as SESTAR, a targeted proteomics with dramatically improved identification sensitivity; CIMAGE, the first quantification software tailored for analyzing activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) data; and rdTOP-ABPP, a cost-effective and highly efficient triplex quantitative chemical proteomics method.

Following his Ph.D., Dr. Gao pursued postdoctoral training at The University of Chicago in experimental proteomics, biochemistry, and epigenetics (particularly histone marks) under Prof. Yingming Zhao’s mentorship. He leveraged his computational skills to develop CHiMA, a strategy for comprehensive identification of histone marks from proteomics data. Moreover, he focused on studying lactylation, which field was pioneered by his postdoc lab at 2019. He developed an analytical method to distinguish L-form lactylation from other isomer PTMs (D-form lactylation and N-ε-(carboxyethyl) lysine). His research clarified the predominant form of lactylation is L-lactylation in response to the Warburg effect and hypoxia, which is fundamentally important for the lactylation field. His study also suggests L-lactylation as a potential hypoxia biomarker and anti-cancer drug target. Dr. Gao has published over 10 papers in prestigious journals like ACS Central Science, Science Advances, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature, and Nature Communications.