Skills:
Technical Skills: Antibody discovery and engineering: design, execution and analysis of high throughput screening of mammalian cell antibody library and mouse hybridomas; immunogen design and generation of immunization protocols; FACS-based antibody affinity maturation, humanization, stabilization, and chain shuffling. Assay development and high-throughput screening: Cell-based and biochemical assays (ELISA, HTRF, luciferase assay and etc) for target validation and characterization of small molecules, peptides and antibodies; high-content imaging (Opera) and FACS-based screening (Influx and FACSArray) with different cell systems using automated liquid handler. Cell biology: mammalian cell and primary neuron culture, cell death assays, gene expression manipulations (transfection and siRNA knockdown), cell-based functional assays. Biochemistry and protein chemistry: protein expression and purification from different systems, Western blots, ELISA, analytical and prep HPLC for small molecules, immunocytochemistry and immunohistology, bioinformatics knowledge such as usage of Swiss-Prot and generation of phylogenetic trees. Molecular biology: DNA and RNA purification and quantification, site-directed mutagenesis, cloning and subcloning, PCR, RT-PCR and real time RT-PCR, Southern and Northern blots, in vitro transcription, sequence analysis and construct design. Electrophysiology: Electroretinogram recordings (ERG) and data analysis Immunohistology and microscopy: extensive experiences of sectioning and immunostaining of retina and brain tissue; fluorescence and confocal imaging. Computer and data analysis skills: Microsoft Office; image data processing using Image J, Scion Image and Photoshop; statistical analysis and data processing using MatLab, GraphPad Prism, Sigma 8, and Psiplot.