image: Mimi Ho
Credit: Columbia University Irving Medical Center
NEW YORK, NY (June 18, 2024)--Chi-Min Ho, assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, has been selected by the Pew Charitable Trusts to be a member of the 2024 Class of Pew Biomedical Scholars. The Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences provides four years of funding to young investigators of outstanding promise in science relevant to the advancement of human health. The program makes grants to selected academic institutions to support the independent research of outstanding individuals who are in their first few years of their appointment at the assistant professor level.
Chi-Min (Mimi), who joined the Columbia faculty in 2020, is one of 22 scientists selected to receive this year’s honor, chosen from among 198 nominations submitted by leading U.S. academic and research institutions.
“I am grateful to the Pew Trusts for supporting our work and honored to be joining the Pew community,” Ho says. “With the support of the Pew Biomedical Scholars Program, we will develop new approaches combining molecular parasitology with biochemistry, biophysics, and cutting-edge imaging tools such as cryoEM and cryoET to elucidate the molecular basis of malaria parasite pathogenesis.”
Ho was born and raised in Ames, IA, where she first discovered her love of protein structure and function as a summer research intern in the lab of Professor Gloria Culver at Iowa State University. After earning her B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004, she worked on membrane protein structure determination in the lab of Professor Robert Stroud at the University of California, San Francisco, before being recruited to the infectious diseases division at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Emeryville, CA, in 2011. There, she worked for three years in small molecule drug discovery for infectious diseases before returning to academia to pursue a doctoral degree in 2014. She completed her Ph.D. in biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2019 under the mentorship of Professor Hong Zhou. Ho joined the faculty in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University in January 2020. In addition to being named a member of the 2024 Class of Pew Biomedical Scholars, Ho is the recipient of the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award and has recently been awarded a grant from the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation.
As a graduate student, Ho pioneered the use of single-particle cryoEM to study the structures and mechanisms of endogenous malarial protein complexes purified directly from malaria parasites. She elucidated the structure and mechanism of an essential malarial membrane protein complex known as the Plasmodium translocon of exported proteins (PTEX), which she purified directly from malaria parasites via an epitope tag inserted into the endogenous locus of a PTEX subunit using CRISPR-Cas9.
Following this work, Ho developed an endogenous structural proteomics approach for identification and structure determination of novel protein complexes enriched untagged from challenging endogenous sources using mass spectrometry and near-atomic resolution cryoEM density maps, reconstructed ab initio, and cryoID, a program she designed to semi-autonomously identify proteins in cryoEM maps of unknown protein complexes. More recently, Mimi’s lab pioneered the use of integrated structural biology approaches centered around in situ cryoET to obtain high resolution native structures of the Pf80S ribosome inside parasite-infected human erythrocytes, shedding light on the molecular effects and mode of action of a leading anti-malarial drug candidate.
Over the next four years, the generous support from the Pew and Mathers awards will allow Ho and her team to pursue innovative, high-risk, high-reward projects aimed at deepening our understanding of malaria parasite biology and to continue to break down barriers to structural study of challenging non-model organisms of high medical relevance like malaria parasites.
Beyond the lab, Ho enjoys engaging in science communication and outreach. She co-hosts The Plunge, a podcast featuring a series of fireside chats with up and coming scientists and leaders in the cryoEM field, with fellow co-hosts Michael Cianfrocco (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) and Elizabeth Kellogg (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital).