Laufer Center Seminar - Honglue Shi
Honglue Shi, Ph.D.
Postdoc at University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley)
February 19, 2026 at 1:00 PM
Laufer Center Lecture Hall 101
Title: Conformational Penalties and Kinetic Barriers in Nucleic Acid Recognition and Function
Abstract: Life relies on biomolecules that recognize and act on nucleic acids with both speed and specificity. These processes are governed not only by static structures, but also by the energetic costs and kinetic barriers encoded in the conformational landscapes of nucleic acids. In this seminar, I will present a quantitative, mechanistic framework for understanding how such energetic landscapes shape nucleic-acid recognition and function across molecular and cellular scales. During my Ph.D., I developed biophysical and computational tools to measure the energetic costs DNA and RNA incur when deforming to bind transcription factors. In my postdoctoral work, I extended this framework to RNA-guided genome editors such as Cas9 and TnpB, integrating single-molecule, biochemical, and cellular measurements to map how conformational barriers control editing outcomes. Together, these energetic principles provide a physical basis for linking molecular sequence to biological function.
