Christina Woo

Many biological processes are governed by chemical signals relayed through protein networks. These small molecule signals can inhibit, enhance, or impart new functions to proteins through direct associations to regulatory hotspots on a protein that drive alteration of the broader proteomic network. Despite the biological and medicinal significance of these hotspots, it is not yet possible to systematically discover, understand, and control their regulatory outcomes. My research program aims to innovate large-scale approaches to illuminate and exploit chemical regulation of proteins. We operate at the forefront of chemical glycobiology, to illuminate nature’s use of regulatory hotspots in sugar-based signaling pathways, and chemical proteomics, to reveal tractable hotspot mimics in cells and new mechanisms for therapeutic intervention. Achievement of these goals will quantitatively change our understanding of and provide new concepts for unraveling how small molecules alter protein interaction networks, and thereby open new frontiers in the control of living systems and strategies for the design of new therapeutic modalities to treat human disease.