Rate My Professor Ning Zhao

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.