Associate Professor, Cellular and Molecular Biology
Phone: 903.877.8738
Email: maolin.lu@uttyler.edu
Department: Cellular and Molecular Biology
Maolin Lu
Maolin Lu, PhD, is an associate professor of cellular and molecular biology at UTT HSC SOM. She earned her bachelor's degree in biological engineering and her master's in biochemistry and molecular biology from Xi’an Jiaotong University, a C9 League institution in China. She completed her PhD in photochemical sciences at Bowling Green State University in Ohio under the mentorship of Ohio Eminent Scholar Dr. Peter Lu. After graduating in 2015, she joined the Walther Mothes Laboratory at Yale University SOM, specializing in virology.
Dr. Lu joined HSC SOM as a faculty member in June 2021 and has since received national and regional recognition as a research scholar. Her awards include the Gilead Research Scholar, Mathilde Krim Fellowship from The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), and UT Rising STARs and UT STARs. Research programs in her lab have been continuously supported by an R35 MIRA (first ever at UT Tyler), an R01, an R56, and multiple CDA awards from the Duke Center for HIV Structural Biology (DCHSB, U54). She actively contributes to the scientific community by serving on NIH study sections, reviewing for more than a dozen professional journals, co-chairing international conferences, delivering invited talks at various conferences, institutions, and grand rounds, mentoring students and postdoctoral fellows, teaching BIOT 5221 and 5132, and co-directing the UTT SOM Summer Research and Clinical Externship program.
Her lab conducts multidisciplinary research in biophysical imaging, virology, molecular biology, structural biology, biochemistry, and computational biology. The primary focus is understanding virus-host interactions for viral pathogens such as HIV-1, SARS-CoV-2, RSV, and HSV to inform effective intervention strategies. Research in her lab is focused on five main areas: 1) Understanding how viral surface spike proteins mediate virus entry into host cells through membrane fusion, 2) Investigating the molecular mechanisms of antibody recognition and immune evasion, 3) Designing and revealing the mode of action of viral inhibitors, 4) Developing new single-molecule technologies, and 5) Exploring roles of host factors in cellular entry of viruses.
Principal Investigator Lu and her lab at SOM have a strong track record of research progress, with publications in prestigious journals, including Nature (2019), Cell Host & Microbe (2020, 2021), Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (2020), Journal of Virology (2020, 2022), Immunity (2021), Journal of Biological Chemistry (2021), Cell Reports (2022, 2024), Nature Communications (2020, 2023), Cell Chemical Biology (2024), Viruses (2022, 2024), Structure (2024), and Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal (CSBJ, 2024), and mBio (2022, 2025).
Education & Training
- 2009 - 2014, Ph.D. in Photochemical Sciences, Bowling Green State University, OH
- 2006 - 2009, MS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China
- 2002 - 2006, BS in Biological Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China
- 2015 - 2021, Microbial Pathogenesis, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT
Honors/Awards
- 2025 UT System STARs Award, UT System, TX
- 2024 Award for Excellence in Basic Science Research, UT Tyler School of Medicine, TX
- 2022- Collaborative Development Awards, Duke Center for HIV-1 Structural Biology, NC
- 2022 Gilead Research Scholar, Gilead Sciences Research Scholars Program, Raleigh, NC
- 2021 Mathilde Krim Fellowship II, The Foundation for AIDS Research, New York, NY
- 2021 UT System Rising STARs Award, UT System, TX
- 2019 Mathilde Krim Fellowship I, The Foundation for AIDS Research, New York, NY
- 2015 James Hudson Brown - Alexander Brown Coxe Fellowship, Yale University, CT
- 2011 Delta Fellowship, Bowling Green State University, OH
Publication Highlights