Molecular Biology: Open Access

Hao Sun

Hao Sun
Postdoctoral research fellow in Dr. Mark Ginsberg’s lab, who is a professor of medicine and director of the Physician-Scientist Training Pathway at UCSD.

Biography

During my Ph.D. and postdoctoral studies, I focused on investigating the regulatory mechanisms of integrin affinity regulation under physiological shear flow, which is important for vascular development, lymphocyte trafficking and inflammation. My most significant finding revealed that different chemokines can switch the ligand specificity of integrin a4b7 to guide tissue-specific lymphocyte homing, which provided a novel mechanism for precise lymphocyte homing through the unique ligand-specific regulation of integrin adhesion by different chemokines (Dev. Cell, 2014). I also found the distinct roles of the CC’ and DE loops in the recognition of MAdCAM-1 by low- and high-affinity a4b7, which suggested that the inactive a4b7 and a4b7 activated by different stimuli have distinct conformations with different structural requirements for MAdCAM-1 binding (J. Biol. Chem., 2011). ŸMoreover, in collaboration with professor Timothy A. Springer (Harvard Medical School), I also investigated the specializations that enabled a4b7 to mediate both rolling adhesion and firm adhesion (J. Cell. Biol., 2012).

Research Interest

Cell adhesion; Rolling and arrest; Leukocyte recruitment and trafficking; Integrin activation; Signaling transduction; Neutrophil; Inflammation; GPCR proteins; Angiogenesis; Hemopoiesis; Thrombus; Inflammatory Bowel Disease; Crispr/Cas9; Stem cells; Immunological synapse (IS); Cancer metastases.