Yizhi Jane Tao is a Chinese biochemist, structural biologist, and professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Professor Tao led a team of researchers to be the first to map the structure of the influenza A virus nucleoprotein to an atomic level, a feat which circulated widely in the popular press.
Tao discovered that the nucleoprotein for influenza A has a distinctive loop that is necessary for the viral genome to be organized into its double-helix hairpin structure.
[5][6] Since then, Tao has also solved the structure of a capsid protein coat for a double-stranded fungal RNA virus.
She later received her Ph.D. in biological sciences from Purdue University while studying bacteriophages under the German-American biophysicist Michael Rossmann, whose lab uncovered a 3D viral structure.
[5][8] She completed a postdoctoral fellowship under Stephen C. Harrison at Harvard University from 1999 to 2002, which also focused on uncovering virus structures.
[12] The Tao Lab uses electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography, and other biochemical and biophysical methods to understand the infection mechanism of RNA viruses.
Astroviruses have an icosahedral shape made of 20 identical equilateral triangular sides and are plus-sense, meaning the genetic information can be directly translated into proteins.
Previous Tao Lab research has discovered that bound CP-delta proteins form a fiber that is part of the infectious virion.