Email: renruobing@fudan.edu.cn

Office Address: 13th Floor, Building D3, Kuanting Bay Valley Community, Chengtou, Yangpu District, Shanghai

Personal Profile

Dr. Ren, Ruobing received his bachelor's degree in biotechnology from the School of Life Sciences of University of Science and Technology of China in 2009. Then he joined in Professor Shi, Yigong’s group in Tsinghua University focusing on the molecular mechanism of cholesterol metabolism regulation and received PhD in Biology in 2015. During 2015-2017, he worked as an associate scientist at Amgen Asia R&D Center. After that, he joined in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen School of Life and Health Sciences and Kobilka Institute of Innovative Drug Discovery as tenure-track assistant professor until end of 2021. Now he is the young investigator of IMIB at Fudan University.

Research Interests

Dr. Ren has focused on the structures and molecular mechanisms of membrane proteins with biological significance using a combination of state-of-the-art structural (X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM) and biochemical/biophysical techniques for over 10 years. The overriding focuses of his lab are the synthesis, transport, and signaling transduction of steroid molecules, fatty acids, and sphingolipids. As first and/or corresponding authors, he has published several research articles in the world's leading journals such as Science, Nature Communications, Journal of Biological Chemistry and so on.

Honors and Awards

• 2018 The high-level talent program of Shenzhen (Category A)

• 2018 The talent program of Longgang district, Shenzhen (Category A)

• 2018 The outstanding expert of Longgang district, Shenzhen

• 2015 Dongsheng innovative scholarship (Class I) of School of Lifesciences at Tsinghua University

Selected Publications

1. Yu L^*,#, Jiao H^*, Pang B^*, Ti R^*, Gan B, Qin Z, Wang J, Zhu L, Hu H, Ren R^#. Structural insights into subtype-specific agonist recognition by Sphingosine-1-phosphate receptors (2026) PLoS Biology. E-print. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003381

2. He D^*, Zhang L^*, Yu L^*, Zhang Y, Chen J, Wang L, Hu H, Liu H, Zheng H, Xia J, Chen J, Li C, Li X, Tang H, Liu J^#, Ren R^#, Hu Y^#, Li Z^#. Fine structural design of 3βHSD1 inhibitors for prostate cancer therapy. (2025) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 122 (26) e2422267122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2422267122

3. Pang B^*, Yu L^*, Li T^*, Jiao H, Wu X, Wang J, He R, Zhang Y, Wang J, Hu H, Dai W^#, Chen L^#, Ren R^#. Molecular basis of Spns2-facilitated sphingosine-1-phosphate transport. (2024) Cell Research. 34 (2), 173-176. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-023-00908-x

4. Jiao H^*, Pang B^*, Liu A, Chen Q, Pan Q, Wang X, Xu Y, Chiang Y^#, Ren R^#, Hu H^#. Structural insights into the activation and inhibition of CXC chemokine receptor 3. (2024) Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. 31 (4), 610-620. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-023-01175-5

5. Ti R^*, Pang B^*, Yu L^*, Gan B, Ma W, A Warshel. Ren R^#, Zhu L^#. Fine-tuning activation specificity of G-protein-coupled receptors via automated path searching. (2024) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 121 (8), e2317893121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2317893121

6. Gan B^*, Yu L^*, Yang H^*, Jiao H, Pang B, Chen Y, Wang C, Lv R, Hu H, Cao Z^#, Ren R^#. The structural basis of itch receptor MRGPRX1 activation. (2023) PLoS Biology. 21 (6), e3001975. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001975

7. Wang C^*, Yu L^*, Zhang J^*, Zhou Y^*, Sun B, Xiao Q, Zhang M, Liu H, Li J, Luo Y, Xu J, Lian Z, Lin J, Wang X, Zhang P, Guo L^#, Ren R^#, Deng D^#. Structural basis of the substrate recognition and inhibition mechanism of Plasmodium falciparum nucleoside transporter PfENT1. (2023) Nature Communications. 14 (1), 1727. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37411-1

8. Jiao H^*, Pang B^*, Chiang Y, Chen Q, Pan Q, Ren R^#, Hu H^#. Structure basis for the modulation of CXC chemokine receptor 3 by antagonist AMG487. (2023) Cell Discovery. 9 (1), 119. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41421-023-00617-0

9. Yu L^*, He L^*, Gan B^*, Ti R^*, Xiao Q, Hu H, Zhu L^#, Wang S^#, Ren R^#. Structural insights into sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor activation. (2022) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 119 (16), e2117716119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2117716119

10. Han Y^*, Zhuang Q^*, Sun B^*, Lv W^*, Wang S^*, Xiao Q, Pang B, Zhou Y, Wang F, Chi P, Wang Q, Li Z, Zhu L, Li F, Deng D^#, Chiang Y^#, Li Z^#, Ren R^#. The crystal structure of steroid reductase SRD5A reveals a conserved steroid reduction mechanism. (2021) Nature Communications. 12 (1), 449. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20675-2

11. Chen G^*, Wang X^*, Ge Y^*, Ma L^*, Chen Q, Liu H, Du Y, Ye D, Hu H^#, Ren R^#. Cryo-EM structure of activated bile acids receptor TGR5 in complex with the stimulatory G protein. (2020) Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy. 5(1), 142. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41392-020-00262-z

12. Yuan Z, Shen T, Xu S, Yu L, Pang B, Gan B, Feng Q, Ren R^#, Sun S^#. AF2-mutation: adversarial sequence mutations against AlphaFold2 in protein tertiary structure prediction. (2024) Acta Material Medica. (Annual Outstanding Paper of 2024), 3(4), 462-476. https://doi.org/10.15212/AMM-2024-0047

13. Han Y, Zhuang Q, Ren R#. Approaches for evolutionary, biochemical, and structural analysis of bacterial steroid 5a-reductases. (2023) Methods in Enzymology. 689, 237-261. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.mie.2023.04.006

14. Wu X, Pang B, You J, Yu L, Ren R^#, Wang H^#, Chen L^#. An LC-MS-based workflow measures the export activity of S1P transporters. (2023) Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. 668, 118-124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbrc.2023.05.014

15. Yu T, Huang T, Yu L, Nantasenamat C, Anuwongcharoen N, Piacham T, Ren R^#, Chiang Y^#. Exploring the Chemical Space of CYP17A1 Inhibitors Using Chem-informatics and Machine Learning. (2023) Molecules. 28 (4), 1679. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28041679

16. Zheng L^*, Meng J^*, Lin M, Lv R, Cheng H, Zou L, Sun J, Li L, Ren R^#, Wang S^#. Structure prediction of the entire proteome of monkeypox variants. (2022) Acta Materia Medica. (Annual Outstanding Cover of 2024) 1 (2), 260-264. https://doi.org/10.15212/AMM-2022-0017

17. Ren R^*,#, Pang B, Li Y. A Glimpse of Structural Biology on Sphingosine-1-Phosphate Metabolism. (2021) Contact. 4, 2515256421995601. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515256421995601

18. Ren R^*, Zhou XH^*, He Y, Ke M, Wu JP, Liu XH, Yan CY, Wu YX, Gong X, Lei XG, Yan SF, Radhakrishnan A, Yan N^#. The crystal structure of a mycobacterial Insig homolog provides insight into how these sensors monitor sterol levels. (2015) Science. 349 (6244), 187-191. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab1091

19. Xie T^*, Ren R^*, Zhang YY^*, Pang Y, Yan C, Gong X, He Y, Li W, Miao D, Hao Q, Deng H, Wang Z, Wu JW^#, Yan N^#. Molecular mechanism for inhibition of a critical component in the Arabidopsis thaliana abscisic acid signal transduction pathways, SnRK2.6, by protein phosphatase ABI1. (2012) J Biol Chem. 287(1):794-802. https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.M111.313106