Research

Dr. Xu's research is driven by a central theme: understanding the fundamental mechanisms of life processes to engineer novel biomedical solutions. His early work as a Master's student at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences focused on enhancing the therapeutic potential of proteins, where he developed two distinct strategies—PEGylation (Reactive and Functional Polymers 2017) and albumin-binding domain fusion (Protein Expr Purif. 2017)—to extend the in vivo half-life of the neuroprotective factor ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF).

In 2017, Dr. Xu was awarded a joint scholarship from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the China Scholarship Council, enabling his transition to Professor Gijs Wuite's laboratory in the Netherlands to pursue biophysical studies of DNA replication. There, he developed Correlated Dynamics and Activity Mapping (C-DAM) (invited manuscript under revision at Nature Protocols), a technology that transforms optical tweezers from passive manipulators into active, super-resolution imaging platforms.

Using C-DAM, Dr. Xu made two key discoveries that resolved long-standing questions in DNA replication:

These powerful single-molecule techniques and mechanistic insights now form the foundation of his postdoctoral research in Professor Carlos Bustamante's laboratory at UC Berkeley/HHMI. Here, he investigates the force generation mechanisms of viral DNA packaging motors, integrating structural biology, single-molecule force spectroscopy, and biochemistry.

In parallel, he is deeply passionate about the capabilities of biophysics in biomedical applications and is exploring the possibility of integrating AI into single-molecule studies. Ultimately, his goal is to pioneer a new paradigm in molecular engineering by integrating artificial intelligence with single-molecule biophysics. He aims to transition from observing molecular machines to actively designing them, not only decoding the mechanisms of motor dysfunction in diseases like cancer and viral infections but actively engineering and programming bespoke molecular machines as novel therapeutic agents and diagnostic tools.