Sheng-cai Lin PhD

Shengcai obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He finished his postdoctoral training at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California at San Diego. During his postdoctoral training, he cloned the receptor for growth hormone-releasing factor, which is a G-protein coupled receptor, and identified types of dwarfism associated with dysfunction of the receptor.

He worked on the regulators of G-protein signaling (RGS proteins) and became interested in the RGS-domain protein called AXIN, standing for inhibitor of the axis. AXIN has been shown to regulate a number of important biological processes, including the JNK/MAPK pathway and tumor suppressor p53 signaling. His most prominent discovery is with the identification of mechanisms for cellular AMPK activation, revealing that AXIN serves as a bridge for LKB1 to phosphorylate AMPK, and later that AMPK activation occurs on the surface of the lysosome. Shengcai continues to focus on the regulation of AMPK and its role in metabolic control.