Rate My Professor Ning Zhao

Ning Zhao, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus within the University of Colorado System. She received her Ph.D. from Colorado State University in 2016 and conducted postdoctoral research at the same institution from 2017 to 2018. Zhao's research centers on developing advanced imaging technologies to visualize the complete life cycle of individual proteins—synthesis, folding, modification, and degradation—at the single-molecule level in their native cellular environments. This work is pivotal for elucidating protein homeostasis mechanisms implicated in diseases including cancer, cystic fibrosis, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Throughout her career, Zhao has innovated tools such as the frankenbody, a genetically encoded probe detailed in her 2019 Nature Communications paper "A genetically encoded probe for imaging nascent and mature HA-tagged proteins in vivo," which enables real-time tracking of HA-tagged proteins in live cells. She has secured prestigious funding, including the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, leading to her independent NIH R00 grant in 2023, a Cystic Fibrosis Foundation award in 2023, and a five-year NIGMS MIRA grant in 2025. Notable publications include "Genetically encoded affinity reagents are a toolkit for visualizing and manipulating endogenous protein function in vivo" (Nature Communications, 2025), "AI-assisted protein design to rapidly convert antibody sequences to intrabodies targeting diverse peptides and histone modifications" (Science Advances, 2026), "Expanding the tagging toolbox for visualizing translation live" (Biochemical Journal, 2025), and "MicroLive: an image processing toolkit for quantifying live-cell single-molecule microscopy" (Bioinformatics Advances, 2026). Zhao frequently presents her findings at international symposia, such as the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting and Protein Folding on the Ribosome meeting in Berlin. Her contributions are advancing the field of live-cell single-molecule imaging and protein dynamics.