(1.)Basic Information

Zhongmin,Tian., Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Biomedical and Bioengineering
School of Life Science and Technology
Xi’an Jiao-tong University
28# Xian-ning road, Xi’an, Shaanxi, P.R.China, 710049
Room: 202
School of Life Science and Technology
Xi’an Jiao-tong University  
 
M.B. biology, North-west University, xian, China, 1997
Ph.D. Biomedical and bioengineering, Xian Jiao-tong university 2001
Postdoctoral Fellow, Nephrology, Medical college of Wisconsin, USA, 2006
Visiting scholar, Physiology, Medical College of Wisconsin, USA ,2009
 
ProfessorAssociate Professor , Assistant Professor Faculty Positions  and postdoctoral position are available NOW. 2020-2025
 
Postdoctoral position is open now. Interested candidates sent the CV to my email box. mzhtmzht@163.com
 
     Post Doctoral and Tenure-Track Faculty Positions are available in school of life science and technology, Xian Jiaotong University, China. The job is involved in unbiased profiling of metabolome by LC-MS/MS GC-MS analysis in blood, tissue samples from the disease modeling rat. The current project focusses on salt-sensitive hypertension.
 
    The candidate should have a Ph.D degree, with a solid graduate training and a strong background in biochemistry or bioinformatics or physiology or analytical chemistry or related fields are encouraged to apply. Qualified applicants should have the hand-on experience on GC-MS, LC-MSMS operation, method development, maintenance, sample preparation, metabolite quantification and identification using MS/MS. The successful candidates should be highly motivated and have excellent scientific skills. S/he should have excellent communication skills in English and an open, proactive personality to work in a team. Experience with data analysis or metabolic modeling is desirable.
    The position is open and applications are accepted immediately. The initial appointment is for 4 years. Renewal is subject to annual evaluations. The salary for this position is around 160, 000(RMB)/per year. 
     Interested candidates should submit a  curriculum vitae, to Prof. Tian by email mzhtmzht@163.com.
 
 
 
Research areas:
u       Renal Physiology
u       Proteomics and metabonomics
 
My laboratory's research interest is in understanding and interpreting the development of salt sensitive hypertension. With kidney injury and metabolic disorders as the hypertension context, our current work is focused on:
1.        Proteomic analysis on salt-sensitive Hypertension
Arterial blood pressure of many essential hypertensive patients, exhibits an increased sensitivity to dietary salt intake. However, Sodium such an environmental factor has received the greatest attention. Approximately one third of the essential hypertensive population is responsive to high salt diet. SS-rat is considered as a useful rat model to understand human salt-sensitive hypertension. A number of physiological processes have been shown to be potentially involved in the increased blood pressure. Particularly, abnormalitiesin the kidneys appear to play a critical role. Quantitative trait loci analyses have indicated that regions of several Chromosomes are associated with the increased blood pressure salt-sensitivity in the SS rat. Howerer, the cut way to understand the development of salt-sensitive hypertension is to generate various Congenic or Consomic rat strains by substituting a small part of the genome from salt-resistant rat into the SS-rat to understand the genetic background.
SS-13BN from SS-rat except Chromosome 13 replaced by the Brown Norway, has become a valuable control strain for the study of the SS-rat. This made SS-13BN genetically 98.05% identical to SS. However, the blood pressure salt-sensitivity is significantly reduced in SS-13BN. Several interesting physiological differences have been identified between SS-13BN and SS rats, including a reduced level of hypertension renal injuryand cardiac hypertrophy.
There are only 1.95% difference in genetic background, and the arterial blood pressure had reduced significantly, but we still didn’t know what gene located on chromosome 13 and involved in the salt hypertension. So the purpose of my research team was to investigate differential expressed protein using current 2D DIGE technology so that we can understand the differential gene located on Chromosome 13.
The most interested results of our current work are fumarase and Hnrnp K, which we fund by 2D-DIGE analysis. (1) Fumarase locates on chromosome 13. (2) different modification lead to PI shift. (3) The activity of fumarase was detected and there were 2.88 fold difference between SS-rat and SS-13BN. (4) The activity of fumarase is also influenced by the ions concentration in the reaction medium in vitro, and reduced with increasing the concentration of sodium chloride in buffer. (5) Fumarase cDNA sequence analysis indicated that there was only one base difference between SS-rat and SS-13BN. This lead to glutimic acid was replaced by lysine at site 481 in SS-rat. Of course, we still found other interested proteins such as Hnrnp K. These results had been published on Hypertension 2009,2008 and Genome Research 2008
2.        The  role of renal cellular metabolism in hypertension
In the area of cellular intermediary metabolism, my laboratory has made a completely novel discovery about a possible role of renal medullary insufficiency of fumarase activity in hypertension (Hypertension 2008, 2009). This discovery helped us to open a new direction of hypertension research focusing on the heretofore largely unrecognized importance of cellular intermediary metabolism in hypertension.  The initial discovery has generated significant excitement in the field as evidenced by recommendation by Faculty 1000 Biology and invitations from colleagues to present this specific work at national conferences or research institutions.
The cellular intermediary metabolism in renal medulla and cortex had been separated and identified by LC-MSMS and GC-MS. The ongoing work is collecting all these metabolism intermediate compounds. Recent discoveries that we are exploring in depth include novel roles of abnormalities in cellular metabolism in the development of salt sensitive hypertension and kidney injury.
 
3.    Phosphoproteomic
Protein phosphorylation is a key reversible modification that is involved in many cellular processes such as metabolism and transcription. Unfortunately, the dynamic nature of phosphorylation and the availability of multiple phosphorylation sites on the same protein add significant complexity to the analysis of cell signaling pathways through the monitoring of phosphoproteins. The purpose of our research work was to investigate whether such a strategy, the phosphoprotein enriched by the Pro-Q® Diamond Enrichment Kit, quantification by a 2D DIGE system and identification by Pro-Q and MALDI-TOF-MS, could be used to produce reliable quantitative data of phosphoproteins that accurately reflects biological differences in a cell system.
 
Technical Resources of our team
·         Agilent 7890a/5975c GC-MS
·         Agilent 1100 capillary HPLC with ion trap mass spectrometry(LC-MSMS)
·         Agilent capillary electrophoresis apparatus with MSD
·         Applied Biosystems Voyager-DE PRO MALDI-TOF-MS
·         Tecan Infinite M200 Pro Reader
·         Cell culture
·         Two-Dimensional Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis (2-D DIGE) .
·         Biochemical analysis.
Grants:
v      Chinese National Natural Science Foundation Grants No.81770655 2016-2021
v      Chinese National Natural Science Foundation Grants No. 81270767(700,000 RMB)2013.2-2017.2
v      Chinese National Natural Science Foundation Grants No. 31071029(360,000 RMB)2011.2-2014.2
v      New Century Excellent Talents in University. Grants No. NCET-08-0434, 500,000 Yuan/RMB 2008.9-2011.9
v      Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province. Grants No. 2005C259, 20,000 Yuan/RMB 2005.9-2008.9
v      Natural Science Foundation of Xi’an Jiao-tong University Grants No.xjj2004117, 12.000 Yuan/RMB
Professional memberships:
Ø       Member, Chinese Physiological Society, committee of Renal Physiology
Ø       Vice–Chief, Ultrasound Medical Engineering Bio-effect Committee in China.
 
Selected publication
  1. Zhongmin Tian, Mingyu Liang* Renal metabolism and hypertension. Nature Communication, 2021,12,963. Doi 10.1038 IF12.3
  2. Di Gao#; Ting Chen#; Shuojia Chen; Xuechun Ren; Yulong Han; Yiwei Li; Ying Wang; Xiaoqing Guo; Hao Wang; Xing Chen; Ming Guo; Yu Shrike Zhang; Guosong Hong; Xingcai Zhang*; Zhongmin Tian*; Zhe Yang*; Targeting hypoxic tumors with hybrid nanobullets for oxygen-independent synergistic photothermal and thermodynamic therapy, Nano-Micro Letters, 2021, DOI: 10.1007/s40820-021-00616-4. IF11.8
  3. Ying Wang, Di Gao, Yan Liu, Xiaoqing Guo, Shuojia Chen, Li Zeng, Jinxuan Ma, Xingcai Zhang *, Zhongmin Tian*, Zhe Yang* Immunogenic-cell-killing and immunosuppression-inhibiting nanomedicine. Bioactive Materials2021, 6(6):1513-1527. Q1
  4. Zhe Yang, Di Gao, Xiaoqing Guo, Lin Jin, Juanjuan Zheng, Ying Wang, Shuojia Chen, Xuewei Zheng, Li Zeng, Ming Guo, Xingcai Zhang*, and Zhongmin Tian* ACS Nano 2020, 14(12): 17442-17457.   IF15.5
  5. Xue H, Geurts AM, Usa K, Wang F, Lin Y, Phillips J, Henderson L, Baker MA, Tian ZM, Liang M.Fumarase Overexpression Abolishes Hypertension Attributable to endothelial NO synthase Haploin sufficiency in Dahl Salt-Sensitive Rats. Hypertension. 2019, 74(2):313-322   IF7.017
  6. Yuan Cheng, Haiying SongXiaoqing Pan, Hong Xue, Yifei Wan, Tao Wang, Zhongmin Tian, Entai Hou, Ian R. Lanza, Pengyuan Liu, Yong Liu, Purushottam W. Laud, Kristie Usa, Yongcheng He, Mingyu Liang Urinary Metabolites Associated with Blood Pressure on a Low- or High-Sodium Diet. Theranostics. 2018; 8(6): 1468-1480 IF: 8.766
  7. Zhe Yang*, Rui Cheng, Chenyang Zhao, Na Sun, Huiyan Luo, Ya Chen, Zerong Liu, Xian Li, Jie Liu, Zhongmin Tian* Thermo- and pH-dual responsive polymeric micelles with upper critical solution temperature behavior for photoacoustic imaging-guided synergistic chemo-photothermal therapy against subcutaneous and metastatic breast tumors. Theranostics, 2018; 8(15): 4097-4115.SCI  IF8.8
  8. Entai Hou, Na Sun, Fuchang Zhang, Chenyang Zhao, Kristie Usa, Mingyu Liang*, Zhongmin Tian* Malate and Aspartate Increase L-arginine and Nitric Oxide and Attenuate Salt-Sensitive Hypertension. Cell Reports. 2017 19, 1631–1639 IF: 8.28
  9. Yang Z, Sun N, Cheng R, Zhao C, Liu Z, Li X, Liu J, Tian Z*. pH multistage responsive micellar system with charge-switch and PEG layer detachment for co-delivery of paclitaxel and curcumin to synergistically eliminate breast cancer stem cells. Biomaterials. 2017147:53-67. IF:8.402
  10. Alison J. Kriegel, Yi Fang, Yong Liu, Zhongmin Tian et al.MicroRNA-Target Pairs in Human Renal Epithelial Cells treated with Transforming Growth Factor β1: A Novel Role of miR-382 Nucleic Acids Research. 2010, 38(22): 8338-8347. IF11.147
  11. Zhongmin Tian, Yong Liu, Kristie Usa, Domagoj Mladinov, Yi Fang, Xiaoqiang Ding, Andrew S. Greene, Allen W. Cowley, Jr. Mingyu Liang. Novel Role of Fumarate Metabolism in Dahl-Salt Sensitive Hypertension. Hypertension. 200954: 255-260.  IF7.017
  12. Zhongmin Tian, Andrew S. Greene, Jennifer Pietrusz, Isaac R. Matus, and Mingyu Liang MicroRNA–target pairs in the rat kidney identified by microRNA microarray, proteomic, and bioinformatic analysis Genome Research. 2008.18:404-411  IF=11.224
  13. Zhongmin Tian, Andrew S. Greene, Kristie Usa, Isaac R. Matus, Jesse Bauwens, Jennifer L. Pietrusz, Allen W. Cowley, Jr. and Mingyu Liang. Renal Regional Proteomes in Young Dahl Salt-Sensitive Rats. Hypertension. 200851(4):899-904.   IF7.017
  14. Xuewei Zheng Meng Chen Xiaoxue Li Pengfei Yang Xinrui Zhao Yanan Ouyang Zhe Yang Mingyu Liang Entai Hou* Zhongmin Tian*Insufficient fumarase contributes to hypertension by an imbalance of redox metabolism in Dahl salt-sensitive rats. Hypertension Research, 2019, 42(11):1672-1682.
  15. Xuewei Zheng, Xiaoxue Li, Meng Chen, Pengfei Yang, Xinrui Zhao, Li Zeng, Yanan OuYang, Zhe Yang and Zhongmin Tian*The protective role of hawthorn fruit extract against high salt-induced hypertension in Dahl salt-sensitive rats: impact on oxidative stress and metabolic patterns. Food & Function. 2019, 10(2):849-858