Junior Principal Investigator
tsai@szbl.ac.cn
Home page of research group：https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0589-5088
Timeline
2020- Present Shenzhen Bay Laboratory Junior Principal Investigator
2015 - 2020 Cardiff University Principle Investigator
2012 - 2014 MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Postdoctoral Researcher
2009 - 2012 Freie Universität Berlin Doctor of Natural Science
2007 - 2008 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich Master of Science
2006 - 200 Academia Sinica Research Assistant
2003 - 2006 National Taiwan University Bachelor of Science
Research Areas
Our research focuses on development of new chemical biology tools that address challenging biological questions. We are particularly interested in developing new tools to control protein function and their biomedical applications, such as therapeutics and diagnostics. The group has expertise in chemical biology, organic synthesis, therapeutic development, gene editing, and genetic code expansion.
Highlights
Yu-Hsuan Tsai did undergraduate study at the National Taiwan University and obtained his BSc with Honors in 2006. He then worked as a research assistant on isolation, characterization, and synthesis of bacterial glycoconjugates in the group of Shih-Hsiung Wu in the Institute of Biological Chemistry at the Academia Sinica. He later joined the group of Peter Seeberger at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in 2007 and moved with the group to Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in 2009. During this time, he worked on different aspects of carbohydrate research, including carbohydrate dendrimers, carbohydrate-antibody interactions, synthetic inositol phosphoglycans as insulin mimetics and total synthesis of glycosylphophatidylinositol anchors. In 2012 he joined the group of Jason Chin at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology working on genetic code expansion and its applications in mammalian cells.
In 2015, Dr Tsai established his independent research group in the School of Chemistry at Cardiff University. He has secured over £2.4 million research funding. To date, he has published 26 peer-reviewed papers (13 as an independent researcher), including articles in Nat. Chem., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. and Chem. Sci. Published works from his lab have been reported as feature news by various agents, such as Science, The Conversation, etc. He is also a co-inventor of two patents and a recipient of different distinctions, such as Cardiff Futures (2019), British Science Association Media Fellow (2018), GW4 Crucible (2017), EMBO Fellow (2014), MCR Career Development Fellow (2012). He has also been an Academic Editor of PLOS ONE since 2020.
Honors
2001, Dow Chemical Award
2001, Chinese Chemical Society Award
2006, National Taiwan University Dean of Science Award
2007, ETH Zurich Scholarship
2008, Novartis Master Fellowship
2009, DAAD Scholarship
2011, European Science Foundation Student Grant
2012, Max Planck Institute Scholarship
2012, MRC Career Development Fellowship
2013, EMBO Long-Term Fellowship
2017, GW4 Crucible
2018, British Science Association Media Fellowship
2019, Cardiff Futures
Related News
https://www.sciencemag.org/features/2018/11/protein-expression-revisited
https://cen.acs.org/articles/93/web/2015/05/New-Approach-Control-Enzyme-Function.html
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acschembio.5b00413
Selected Publications
1. Y.-H. Tsai*, T. Doura, S. Kiyonaka, Tethering-based chemogenetic approaches for the modulation of protein function in live cells. Chem. Soc. Rev. 2021, 50, 7909.
2. A. R. Nödling, E. M. Mills, X. Li, D. Cardella, E. J. Sayers, S.-H. Wu, A. T. Jones, L. Y. P. Luk, Y.-H. Tsai*, Cyanine dye mediated mitochondrial targeting enhances the anti-cancer activity of small-molecule cargoes. Chem. Commun. 2020, 56, 4672.
3. J.-H. Liao, C.-H. Tsai, S. G. Patel, J.-T. Yang, I-F. Tu, M. Lo Cicero, M. Lipka-Lloyd, W.-L. Wu, W.-J. Shen, M.-R. Ho, C.-C. Chou, G. R. Sharma, H. Okanishi, L. Y. P. Luk, Y.-H. Tsai*, S.-H. Wu*, Acetylome of Acinetobacter baumannii SK17 reveals a highly-conserved modification of histone-like protein HU. Front. Mol. Biosci. 2017, 4, 77.
4. Y. -H. Tsai, S. Essig, J. R. James, K. Lang, J. W. Chin*, Selective, rapid and optically switchable regulation of protein function in live mammalian cells. Nat. Chem. 2015, 7, 554.
5. X. Zheng, Z. Li, W. Gao, X. Meng, X. Li, L. Y. P. Luk, Y. Zhao, Y.-H. Tsai*, C. Wu*, Condensation of 2-((alkylthio)(aryl)methylene)malononitrile with 1,2-aminothiol as a novel bioorthogonal reaction for site-specific protein modification and peptide cyclization. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2020, 142, 5097.