Mei Hong

Mei Hong develops and applies innovative solid-state NMR spectroscopy methods to elucidate the structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules. She has a long-standing interest in membrane proteins involved in infectious diseases. These include influenza and SARS-CoV-2 ion channels, HIV fusion proteins, bacterial multidrug-resistance transporters, and antimicrobial peptides. She is also interested in amyloid proteins in neurodegenerative diseases, with a current focus on the microtubule-associated protein tau. In addition to proteins, the Hong group at MIT has pioneered the studies of plant cell wall polysaccharides using multidimensional solid-state NMR. To elucidate the structures and dynamics of these complex biomolecular systems, they create new solid-state NMR tools such as 19F NMR experiments to measure inter-atomic distances to 1-2 nanometers, spin polarization transfer experiments to measure protein-water and protein-ligand interactions, and site-resolved dipolar and quadrupolar NMR techniques to investigate the geometry of molecular motion.