DENG, Xin (鄧新)

Prof. Deng received his Bachelor and Master degrees in Microbiology from China Agricultural University. He completed PhD in Genetics at the Kansas State University and postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago. He was a Professor at Nankai University, and has been working in CityUHK as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor. He is interested in bacterial virulence, including gene regulation, signalling pathways, and RNA epigenetics. His research lies on the interface of multi-disciplinary approaches with the ultimate goal of developing novel therapies to combat bacterial infection. More information can be found at the group website.

He has co-authored over 100 publications in SCI-indexed journals including Cell, Cell Host Microbe, Nature Communications, Cell Reports, eLife, PLOS Biology, Nucleic Acids Research, mBio, etc. His work has earned him over 7,200 citations on Google Scholar (an H-index of 37).

Prof. Deng was awarded a CityUHK President’s Award in 2020 and Outstanding Research Award in 2023. His research has been supported by Hong Kong Research Grants Council, National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Health and Medical Research Fund (HMRF), Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF), Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Commission, and GuangDong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation for a total available resource of over $30 million HKD.

Prof. Deng serves as an editor for 6 SCI journals, including Genes and Diseases as Associate Editor. He is a grant review board member for HMRF, and has reviewed proposals from more than 10 funding agents from more than 10 countries and regions, including China, UK and Singapore.

Research Interests

The emergence and spread of various multidrug-resistant bacterial strains have posed alarming challenges to public health and agriculture worldwide. Public demand for new antibiotics is enormous, yet drug development pipelines of the pharmaceutical industry started to run dry with limited targets available for inventing new bactericidal antibiotics. Our group has been working on molecular mechanism of virulence in a wide range of bacterial pathogens including plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae, the model human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus cereus, klebsiella pneumoniae, which are of world-wide importance. These pathogens rely on multiple system to invade their hosts, which is finely regulated by a group of transcription factors and signalling pathways. Research in our group has led to the identification of a variety of new virulence-associated two-component systems, transcription factors and their molecular mechanisms. We have mapped the global transcription factor-based regulatory networks for these superbugs, and found a couple of potent lead compounds for future development. Our work also demonstrates that RNA modifications exist in a wide-range of bacterial species, which suggests their potential important roles in gene regulation.

Representative Recent Publications

1. Hua C^#, Huang J^#, Sun Y^#, Wang T^#, Li Y, Cui Z, Deng X*. (2024) Hfq mediates transcriptome-wide RNA structurome reprogramming under virulence-inducing conditions in a phytopathogen. Cell Reports. DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114544.
2. Huang J^#, Chen F^#, Lu B, Sun Y, Li Y, Hua C, Deng X*. (2024) DNA methylome regulates virulence and metabolism in Pseudomonas syringae.eLife. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.96290.1
3. Sun Y^#, Li J^#, Huang J^#, Li S, Li Y, Deng X*. (2024) Architecture of genome-wide transcriptional regulatory network reveals dynamic functions and evolutionary trajectories in Pseudomonas syringae. eLife. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.96172.1
4. Xie Y^#, Li J^#, Ding Y^#, Shao X, Sun Y, Xie F, Liu S, Tang S, Deng X*. An atlas of bacterial two-component systems reveals function and plasticity in signal transduction. Cell Reports. (2022) 41(3):111502.
5. Hua C^#, Huang J^#, Wang T^#, Sun Y, Liu J, Huang L, Deng X*. Bacterial transcription factors bind to coding regions and regulate internal cryptic promoters. mBio. (2022) e0164322.
6. Xie Y^#, Ding Y^#, Shao X, Yao C, Li J, Liu J, Deng X*. Pseudomonas syringae senses polyphenols via phosphorelay crosstalk to inhibit virulence. EMBO Reports. (2021) 12:e52805.
7. Shao X^#, Tan M^#, Xie Y, Yao C, Wang T, Huang H, Zhang Y, Ding Y, Liu J, Han L, Hua C, Wang X*, Deng X*. Integrated regulatory network in Pseudomonas syringae reveals dynamics of virulence. Cell Reports. (2021) 34:108920.
8. Fan L^#, Wang T^#, Hua C^#, Sun W^#, Li X, Grunwald L, Liu J, Wu N, Shao X, Yin Y, Yan J*, Deng X*. A compendium of DNA-binding specificities of transcription factors in Pseudomonas syringae. Nature Communications. (2020) 11:4947.
9. Huang H^#, Shao X^#, Xie Y^#, Wang T, Zhang Y, Wang X*, Deng X*. An integrated genomic regulatory network of virulence-related transcriptional factors in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Nature Communications. (2019) 10:2931.
10. Xie Y, Shao X, Zhang Y, Liu J, Wang T, Zhang W, Hua C, Deng X*. Pseudomonas savastanoi two-component system RhpRS switches between virulence and metabolism by tuning phosphorylation state and sensing nutritional conditions. mBio. (2019) 10(2):e02838-18.

26 July 2024