Associate Professor

Personal Statement: 

Dr. Xue Liu earned her Ph.D. from School of Medicine at Tsinghua University, under supervision of Professor Jingren Zhang.  She was a joint PhD student of University of Groningen (the Netherlands) and Tsinghua University (China) from September, 2015 to January, 2017. During this period, she adopted the CRISPRi system, combined with microscopy, to study the essential genes of the important human opportunistic pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae. After the visiting, she went back to Tsinghua University and defended the PhD thesis in June, 2017. Dr. Liu did her postdoctoral at University of Lausanne, Switzerland, from 2017 to 2021, and became an Associate Professor at Shenzhen University since August, 2021. Dr. Liu has focused on exploring cut-in-edge techniques to study pathogenesis and biology of bacteria. She used arrayed CRISPRi library combined with high-content microscopy to study the essential genes and revealed the function of several important genes in S. pneumoniae (Liu et al., Molecular Systems biology, 2017, cover). Further on, she developed the CRISPRi-seq methodology for in vivo studies of bacterial pathogens, and refined the list of therapeutic targets (Liu et al., Cell Host & Microbe, 2021). To know more about her research and group, please visit xliugroup website: http://xliugroup.com

Research Interests:

Pathogenesis of important pathogenic bacteria; antibiotic resistance

Selected Peer-reviewed Publications:

1. Liu Xue *, Kimmey, J.M. *, Matarazzo, L. *, de Bakker, V., Van Maele, L., Sirard, J.-C., Nizet, V., and Veening, J.-W. (2021). Exploration of Bacterial Bottlenecks and Streptococcus pneumoniae Pathogenesis by CRISPRi-Seq. Cell Host & Microbe. Volume 29, Issue 1, 13 January 2021, Pages 107-120.e6.

2. Liu Xue, Gallay, C., Kjos, M., Domenech, A., Slager, J., van Kessel, S.P., Knoops, K., Sorg, R.A., Zhang, J.R., and Veening, J.W. (2017). High-throughput CRISPRi Phenotyping Identifies New Essential Genes in Streptococcus pneumoniae. Molecular systems biology 13, 931. (Cover paper)

3. Liu Xue, Li, J.W., Feng, Z., Luo, Y., Veening, J.W., and Zhang, J.R. (2017). Transcriptional Repressor PtvR Regulates Phenotypic Tolerance to Vancomycin in Streptococcus pneumoniae. Journal of bacteriology 199.

4. Zhang, B. *, Liu Xue *, Lambert, E. *, Mas, G., Hiller, S., Veening, J.-W., and Perez, C. (2020). Structure of a proton-dependent lipid transporter involved in lipoteichoic acids biosynthesis. Nat Struct Mol Biol 27, 561–569.