Papers
1
Total Citations
28
H-Index
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About
Zhaoyong Yang is a pioneering researcher in protein engineering and synthetic biology, with a primary focus on directed evolution of enzymes for bioactive peptide synthesis. His major contributions center on developing innovative high-throughput screening methods to engineer cyclodipeptide synthases (CDPSs), enzymes that produce diketopiperazine (DKP) scaffolds—key motifs in drug discovery. In his landmark 2022 study, Yang introduced a robotic, label-free mass spectrometric screening approach capable of evaluating 190 possible DKP molecules within a mass window of 115–373 Da. This breakthrough enabled the isolation of a novel F186L CDPS mutant that efficiently synthesizes cyclo(l-Phe-l-Val), a product undetectable in the wild-type enzyme’s repertoire. The work, which has garnered 28 citations, demonstrates a powerful generalizable strategy for engineering enzyme specificity without fluorescent or chromogenic labels. Yang’s approach overcomes traditional limitations in directed evolution by directly detecting product formation, opening new avenues for creating non-natural cyclic peptides with therapeutic potential. His research stands at the intersection of analytical chemistry and synthetic biology, offering transformative tools for discovering novel bioactive molecules.
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