Dr. Lu has been a member of the Department of Chemistry since 1994, with joint appointments in the Department of Biochemistry, Materials Science and Engineering, the Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology, and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. He won the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 1995 and the Creativity Extension in 1998. He also won the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award in 1996, the Research Corporation Cottrell Scholars Award in 1997, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 1998, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 1999, and the Award Runner-up for the Biosensors and Bioelectronics Award in 2002. He is now a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Professor.

Professor Lu's research goals are to elucidate the role of metal ions in proteins and catalytic DNA/RNA, to design metalloenzymes with novel structures and functions, and to explore the use of the enzymes in biotechnological and pharmaceutical applications.

Metalloprotein design

Metalloproteins catalyze difficult reactions with efficiency and selectivity that few other natural or artificial molecules can match. Little has been known about how to design a metalloprotein with desired structure and activity. Dr. Lu has been using stable, easy-to-produce, and well-characterized proteins as scaffolds for designing and engineering novel metalloproteins. Proteins of interest include heme-copper oxidase (a terminal oxidase of the respiratory chain), manganese peroxidase (a heme enzyme with great potential for providing renewable energy and destroying environmental pollutants), and cytochrome P450 (another heme enzyme involved in many regio-, stereo-, and enantio-selective chemical transformations).

Engineering artificial biocatalysts

Lu is interested in making artificial biocatalysts by incorporating transition metal complexes into proteins. The combination of efficiency of the metal catalysts with the control and selectivity of proteins resulted in a new generation of asymmetric catalysts for synthesis of fine chemicals and chiral drug intermediates. Professor Lu's syntheses are carried out under mild physiological conditions, using largely nontoxic reagents in aqueous solution. Since proteins are hydrophilic outside and hydrophobic inside, many transition metal catalysts that are not normally soluble in water can be made to be function in an aqueous environment. These features, together with the biodegradability of the products, make this an environmentally benign approach.

Catalytic DNA/RNA and biosensor

Catalytic DNA/RNAs are a new class of metalloenzymes with great promise as pharmaceutical agents against AIDS and other retroviral diseases. Lu has developed new approaches for spectroscopic characterization of a catalytically active metal-binding site in catalytic DNA/RNAs, thus providing detailed structural and mechanistic information on thieir catalysis. He has also used an in vitro selection approach to obtain a group of new catalytic DNAs with both high metal-binding affinity for spectroscopy study and high reactivity for pharmaceutical applications. We aim to develop new DNA biosensors for simultaneous detection and quantification of bioavailable radionuclides and metal contaminants, such as lead, chromium, and mercury. The sensors will be highly sensitive and selective, not only for different metal ions, but also for different oxidation states of the same metal ion.