Dr. Xuelian Luo received her B.S. in Chemistry from Peking University (Beijing, China). She came to the U.S. in 1990 and received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Tufts Medical School (Boston, MA) in 1997. Her thesis research focused on the structure determination of the DNA-binding domain of SV40 large T-antigen and its interaction with DNA by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. She then joined Dr. Gerhard Wagner’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School (1997-1999). She later moved to Dallas and completed her postdoctoral training in Dr. Jose Rizo-Rey’s lab at UT Southwestern Medical Center (1999-2001). During her postdoctoral training, Dr. Luo first solved the solution structure of the Mad2 spindle checkpoint protein. She then determined the structures of Mad2 in complex with its cellular interacting proteins Mad1 and Cdc20. In 2001, Dr. Luo was appointed as an Instructor in the Department of Pharmacology. In 2006, Dr. Luo began her independent research career as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pharmacology at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Her long-term research interest is to combine structural biology and cell biology to study cancer-related topics, such as cell division and signal transduction.
