Zhihua Hua
Assistant Professor
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
USA
Biography
My imagination is consumed with thoughts of how life is created and regulated. To appreciate the realities of life, I use plants as a working model and aim to build a system, which can integrate the information from evolutionary history, genomic patterns, biochemical reactions, as well as the performance of individuals.
Research Interest
My research interests fall into two primary fields, evolutionary and computational biology, and experimental biology, for studying the functions of F-box genes in plants. The first F-box gene was identified in yeast to encode the substrate receptor, named the F-box protein, in an SKP1-Cul1-F-box (SCF) complex. In eukaryotes, numerous SCF complexes form a large group of E3 ubiquitin ligases catalyzing protein ubiquitylation at the last step of a three-enzyme cascade reaction, which starts with ubiquitin activation by a ubiquitin-activating enzyme (E1) and ubiquitin conjugation by a ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme (E2). Most of the time, the ubiquitylated proteins are recognized by the 26S proteasome for degradation. This highly selective protein degradation pathway allows a eukaryotic cell to precisely maintain the homeostasis of its entire proteome.