Xiaoyan Sun graduated from Zhejiang University of Technology, in Hangzhou, China. As an undergraduate student, she did research investigating the degradation of paclobutrazol introduced by microorganisms. Following the above project, she pursued research work in a bio-pharmaceutical chemistry project involving the biosynthesis of glutathione using yeast.
 
      After graduation, she worked at Zhejiang Chemicals Import and Exports Cooperation, China, as a junior research assistant. At the beginning of 2003, she went to Ann Arbor, starting doing research with Professor Al -Hashimi at Chemistry Department, University of Michigan as a research assistant. During that time, she was involved in a number of projects aimed at preparing and purifying RNA fragments from the genome of HIV-1 for NMR structural and dynamical studies.
 
     Currently, she is a third year graduate student, working on investigating the mechanism of HIV-1 DIS RNA isomerization using NMR. Her research is focused on characterizing the structure and dynamics of bulge contained by monomer DIS in the absence and presence of Mg2+; mapping the binding of NCp7 protein to monomer DIS; determining the relative orientation of DIS monomers in the C-2 symmetric kissing dimer via a palindromic loop sequence.
 
Publications/Honors:

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1. The first prize in The “CHALLENGE” National Academic Research Competition 2000

2. Zhang, Q., Sun, X., Watt, E. D., and Al-Hashimi, H. M.*, Resolving the Motional Modes that Code for RNA Adaptation. Science, 311:653-656 2006

3. Sun, X., Zhang, Q., and Al-Hashimi, H.M.*, Resolving Fast and Slow Internal Motions in the Bulge Containing Stem-loop 1 of HIV-1 that are Modulated by Mg2+ Binding: Role in the Kissing-Duplex Structural Transition, Nucleic Acids Res. , 35:1698-713 2007

4. Casiano-Negroni, A.,Sun, X., and Al-Hashimi, H.M.*, Probing Na+ Induced Changes in the HIV-1 TAR Conformational Dynamics Using NMR Residual Dipolar Couplings: New Insights into the Role of Counterions and Electrostatic Interactions in Adaptive Recognition , Biochemistry , 46:6525-35 2007

5. Getz, M.M.,Sun, X., Casiano-Negroni, A., Zhang, Q., and Al-Hashimi, H.M.*, NMR Studies of RNA Dynamics and Structural Plasticity using NMR Residual Dipolar Couplings, Biopolymers , 86:384-402 2007