Brian Young

Professor Young’s research has focused on understanding the mechanism of macromolecular machines, and the application of this to developing more effective protein drugs. His PhD work involved understanding how RNA polymerase is able to melt promoters to gain access to the template strand for RNA synthesis. As a postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley, he sought to isolate actomyosin cytokinetic rings to better understand how this complicated apparatus divides cells. Following his postdoc, he transitioned to biotechnology, helping to establish protein therapeutics utilizing unnatural amino acids. Specifically, he worked at the interface of research and development, studying tRNAs, tRNA synthetases, and in vitro transcription/translation.

• Understanding the mechanism of macromolecular machines

• PhD, University of California, San Francisco