Elsa Yan

Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Member of Yale faculty since 2007

E-mail: elsa.yan@yale.edu
Web site: http://ursula.chem.yale.edu/~yanlab/Index.html

Research We have two goals in our research program. The first is to elucidate the signal transduction process across cell membranes through 7-helical transmembrane G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). GPCRs belong to the largest gene family in the human genome and are important drug targets. A clear molecular picture of how GPCRs mediates signal transduction will be beneficial to designing drugs and understanding pathology of GPCR-related diseases. The second goal is to develop techniques of surface-specific non-linear spectroscopy to investigate interactions between amyloid proteins and cell membranes. Amyloid proteins are related to a series of diseases associated to aging such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and diabetes. A fundamental understanding of how amyloid proteins disrupt cell membranes will contribute to revealing the pathogenic mechanism and guiding drug design.

Education
B.S. Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1995
Ph.D. Columbia University, 2000
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Berkeley, 2000-2004
Visiting Fellow, HHMI, Rockefeller University, New York, 2000-2004
Research Assistant Professor, Rockefeller University, New York, 2004-2007

Honors
Sir Edward Youde Memorial Scholarship, Hong Kong, 1994
First Class Honors for B.Sci., Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1995
Distinction for Ph.D., Columbia University, New York, 2000
Pegram Award for graduate research, Columbia University, New York, 2000

Recent Publications
E.C.Y. Yan, Z. Gamin, M.A. Kazmi, B.S.W. Chang, T.P. Sakmar, & R.A. Mathies. Resonance Raman Analysis of the Mechanism of Energy Storage and Chromophore Distortion in the Primary Visual Photoproduct. Biochemistry 2004, 43, 10867.

E.C.Y. Yan, J.W. Lewis, I. Szundi, J. Epps, A. Bhagat, & D.S. Kliger. Photointermediates of the Rhodopsin S186A Mutant as a Probe of the Hydrogen Bond Network in the Chromophore Pocket and Counterion Switch. J. Phy. Chem. C. 2007, 111, 8843.

S. Ye, C. Köhrer, T. Huber, M. Kazmi, E.C.Y. Yan, P. Sachdev, A. Bhagat, U.L. RajBhandary, & T.P. Sakmar. Site-specific Incorporation of Keto Amino Acids Into Functional G Protein-Coupled Receptors Using Unnatural Amino Acid Mutagenesis. J. Biol. Chem. 2008, 283, 1525.

S. Ahuja, V. Hornak, E.C.Y. Yan, N. Syrett, J. Goncalves, A. Hirshfeld, M. Ziliox, T.P. Sakmar, M. Sheves, P.J. Reeves, S.O. Smith, & M. Eilers. Helix Movement is Coupled to Displacement of Extracellular Loop 2 in Rhodopsin Activation. Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 2009, 16, 168.

G. Ma, J. Liu, L. Fu, & E.C.Y Yan. Probing Water and Biomolecules at the Air/Water Interface with a Broad-Bandwidth Vibrational Sum Frequency Generation Spectrometer from 3800 to 900 cm-1. Appl. Spectro. In press.

Elsa Yan

Research Interests