Form follows function or function follows form? How do 2 interacting proteins find each other in a cell within millions of other macromolecules? Since my college days at UCSD, I have always been fascinated by protein structures and how they encode functions within them. To search for these answers, I have traveled from San Francisco (US), Frankfurt (Germany), and Oxford (England), and returned back to San Diego again. This time I am attracted to viral proteins structures and seeking to understand how small viral proteins can disrupt large cellular macromolecular complexes.

Horng Ou
Research Associate
Summary
Published articles Show More
Visualizing viral protein structures in cells using genetic probes for correlated light and electron microscopy.
Published in Methods
Structural studies of viral proteins most often use high-resolution techniques such as X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance, single particle negative stain, or cryo-electron microscopy (EM) to reveal atomic interactions of soluble, homogeneous viral proteins or viral protein complexes. Once viral proteins or complexes are separated fro...
A structural basis for the assembly and functions of a viral polymer that inactivates multiple tumor suppressors.
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Published in Cell
Evolution of minimal DNA tumor virus genomes has selected for small viral oncoproteins that hijack critical cellular protein interaction networks. The structural basis for the multiple and dominant functions of adenovirus oncoproteins has remained elusive. E4-ORF3 forms a nuclear polymer and simultaneously inactivates p53, PML, TRIM24, and MRE11/R...
The critical protein interactions and structures that elicit growth deregulation in cancer and viral replication.
Published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Systems Biology and Medicine
One of the greatest challenges in biomedicine is to define the critical targets and network interactions that are subverted to elicit growth deregulation in human cells. Understanding and developing rational treatments for cancer requires a definition of the key molecular targets and how they interact to elicit the complex growth deregulation pheno...