Ci Ji Lim

Position title: Assistant Professor

Address:
Biochemistry
Telomeres, chromatin structure-function relationship, protein-DNA interactions, molecular machines

Education: Ph.D. in Biophysics from National University of Singapore (Jie Yan Lab), Postdoc in University of Colorado Boulder (Tom Cech lab)
Website: https://biochem.wisc.edu/faculty/Lim
Department: Biochemistry
Research Interests: Telomeres, chromatin structure-function relationship, protein-DNA interactions, molecular machines
Research Fields: Disease Biology, Genomics and Proteomics

Research Description:
Telomeres are repetitive DNA and associated proteins at the ends of linear chromosomes. They protect our chromosome ends from being misread as broken ends, underlining the importance of telomeres for genome stability, and they also serve as a “clock” for our biological lifespan. Our lab seeks to investigate the molecular mechanisms of human telomere maintenance using an interdisciplinary approach. This includes structural studies using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and spatial/temporal studies at the chromatin level using single-molecule techniques. Specially, our lab focuses on two major areas – 1) Telomere chromatin organization and 2) Telomere replication mechanism.

Representative Publications:

Search PubMed for more publications by Ci Ji Lim

He Q, Lin X, Chavez BC, Agrawal S, Lusk BL, C Lim*. Structures of the human CST-Pol-primase complex bound to telomere templates. Nature. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05040-1 (2022)

AJ Zaug, C Lim*, CL Olson, MT Carilli, KJ Goodrich, DS Wuttke*, TR Cech*. CST does not evict elongatin telomerase but prevents initiation by ssDNA. Nucleic Acids Res. Nov;49(20):11653-11665. (2021)

C Lim*, TR Cech*. Shaping human telomeres: from shelterin and CST complexes to telomeric chromatin organization. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol. Apr;22(4):283-298, (2021)