Min Dong - IDDRC

Min Dong, PhD

Research Associate in Urology, Boston Children’s Hospital; Associate Professor in Urology, Harvard Medical School.

Research Focus

Membrane trafficking in neurons and bacterial neurotoxins.

Brief Research Description

A major focus of Dong's lab is in the field of cellular neuroscience, particularly on synaptic vesicle recycling and endosomal sorting. Neurons are highly specialized cells with sophisticated membrane trafficking processes. Their overarching goal is to understand how the membrane trafficking system is specialized and regulated in neurons and how defects in membrane trafficking pathways lead to neurodegeneration and other developmental diseases. Studying how pathogens exploit membrane trafficking systems in cells has been proven to be a powerful approach to understand the molecular mechanism of these critical cellular processes. Their current approach utilizes botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) and related tetanus neurotoxin (TeNT) as probes to investigate the critical membrane trafficking events in neurons.

Key Publications (PMCIDs)

Sulfated glycosaminoglycans and low-density lipoprotein receptor contribute to Clostridium difficile toxin A entry into cells.
Tao L, Tian S, Zhang J, Liu Z, Robinson-McCarthy L, Miyashita S, Breault D.T., Gerhard R, Oottamasathien S, Whelan S.P.J., Dong M.
Nature Microbiology. 2019 Oct; 4(10): 1760–1769. PMCID: PMC6754795

Structural basis for recognition of frizzled proteins by Clostridium difficile toxin B
Chen P, Tao L, Wang T, Zhang J, He A, Lam KH, Liu Z, He X, Perry K, Dong M, Jin R.
Science 2018;360(6389):664-9. PMCID: PMC6231499

Genome-wide CRISPR screens for Shiga toxins and ricin reveal Golgi proteins critical for glycosylation.
Tian S, Muneeruddin K, Choi MY, Tao L, Bhuiyan RH, Ohmi Y, Furukawa K, Furukawa K, Boland S, Shaffer SA, Adam RM, Dong M.
PLoS Biol 2018;16(11):e2006951. PMCID: PMC6258472

Identification of a Botulinum Neurotoxin-like Toxin in a Commensal Strain of Enterococcus faecium.
Zhang S, Lebreton F, Mansfield MJ, Miyashita SI, Zhang J, Schwartzman JA, Tao L, Masuyer G, Martinez-Carranza M, Stenmark P, Gilmore MS, Doxey AC, Dong M.
Cell Host Microbe 2018;23(2):169-76 e6. PMCID: PMC5926203

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