Draft:Ming Hammond

= Ming Hammond =

Background
Ming Hammond is a Taiwanese Chemist. She currently works at the University of Utah as a professor of Biological Chemistry and runs The Hammond Lab. Her research focuses on studying cyclic dinucleotides and their use in mammalian cells and bacteria for signaling as well as engineering nucleic acids to be used for gene control and imaging.

Early Life and Education
Ming Hammond is a Taiwanese Chemist who was raised in Owings Mills Maryland. Neither of her parents were in STEM and she was the first person in her family to obtain a Ph.D. From 1996-2000 Ming Hammond spent her early college years in Pasadena California at the California Institute of Technology where she was awarded the Beckman Scholarship and completed her B.S. in Chemistry. Her work as an undergraduate in a research lab discovering enzyme activity inspired the rest of her career. She then continued on to further her education by obtaining a Ph.D. in Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley in 2005. After spending a summer in Heidelberg Germany, she went on to work as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular Biology from 2005-2009 at Yale University in New Haven, CT studying riboswitch biology. Doctor Hammond has over 50 publications and is most recognized for her work developing the first fluorescent RNA biol switches to monitor cell activity utilizing riboswitch and fluorescent-binding technology. These biosensors have been utilized as she furthers her career studying bacteria signaling cAG. Her work allows us to better understand cellular activity which has great potential to change the research and health field alike with future implications such as preventing the spread of diseases.

Research
Hammond started her career early in her undergraduate studies through Cal Tech’s work/study program where she studied protein complexes. Shortly after finishing her research fellowship at Yale, she started her career in academia as an assistant professor. From 2009 to 2018, she worked at UC Berkeley through the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. During her time at Berkeley, she also became affiliated with the NIGMS Center for RNA Systems Biology, the Synthetic Biology Institute, the California Institute for Quantitative Bioscience, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2018, Hammond moved to become first an Associate Professor, and later a Professor, with the University of Utah, Department of Chemistry. She became an executive committee member for the Henry Eyring Center for Cell and Genome Science in 2018 as well as the Co-Director of the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduate Program in 2019 and continues to be affiliated with these programs. From 2020 to 2023, she also served as a Co-Director for the U of U Beckman Scholar Program through the College of Science.

Hammond received an NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2011 to advance research in live cell imaging of RNAs, and her major research contributions focus on the discovery of new biosensors and signaling pathways. In particular, her work has focused on designing fluorescent biosensors using a circularly permuted roboswitch, SAM-I. Using in vitro and in vivo fluorescent assays, it was shown that circularly permuted riboswitches could retain and/or improve ligand binding and conformational switching. This finding has implications for regulating gene expression, as well as potential for application in other RNA devices. Hammond has also contributed to the design of two new RNA-based fluorescent (RBF) biosensors with advantages for monitoring dynamic processes as well as the Venus-YcgR-NLuc (VYN) sensors for applications like diagnostic and genetically encodable tools for monitoring cdi-GMP in live cells, including bacteria in various environments. Other notable works include a demonstration of the functionality of an exogenously inducible gene circuit in plants for applications in spaceflight, indicating that synthetic biology in plants could be a feasible solution for long-distance space travel

Hammond’s lab continues to focus on the design of RNA-based fluorescent biosensors for cyclic dinucleotides. Live cell imaging experiments demonstrate that these biosensors had a fluorescent component that could confirm in vivo enzyme production. This work focused on the discovery of an RNA-based fluorescent biosensor specific to the cyclic dinucleotide cAG (cyclic AMP-GMP). The bacteria Geobactr produces cAG through GEMM-I roboswitches and GGDEF enzymes, which were previously found to be specific to a different cyclic dinucleotide. Related work describes a full kinetic model designed to reveal mechanisms of the in vivo specificity of a GGDEF enzyme associated with bacterial di-GMP signaling, another cyclic dinucleotide. This discovery has implications for bacterial detection and received much attention including, the 2015 Signaling Breakthrough of the Year Award. In conjunction with Russel Vance from the University of California, Berkeley, it was proved that this discovered cyclic GMP-AMP signaling can function as an innate immune sensor in all three domains of life

Patents

 * 2005 US Pat Appl Pub : Peptide beta-strand mimics based on pyridinones, pyrazinones, pyridazinones, and triazinones
 * 2013 US Pat 13/747,395 : A P5SM suicide exon for regulating gene expression
 * 2016 US Pat Appl 62/438,126 : Methods of producing cyclic dinucleotides
 * 2016 US. Pat Appl 62/349,556 : Fluorescent biosensor for 2’, 3’-cGAMP
 * 2015 US. Pat Appl 62/246,953 : A fluorescent biosensor for high throughout screening of methyltransferase activity
 * 2024 US. Pat Appl 11,873,319 : Cyclic di-nucleotide induction of type I interferon

Selected Honors and Awards

 * 2024 Kavli Fellow, National Academy of Sciences
 * 2016 Women in Science Award, Chau Hoi Sheun Foundation
 * 2011-2016 National Institutes of Health New Innovator Award
 * 2011 Regents’ Junior Faculty Fellowship (UC Berkeley)
 * 2010 - 2013 Chevron Chair of Chemistry (UC Berkeley)
 * 2010 Thieme Chemistry Journal Award
 * 2008-2016 Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface
 * 2000-2005 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellowship
 * 2000 National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship
 * 2000 Richard P. Schuster Memorial Prize in Chemistry
 * 1999-2000  Carnation Merit Award
 * 1999 Arie J. Haagen-Smit Memorial Award
 * 1998-1999 Beckman Scholar Fellowship
 * 1998-1999 Caltech Prize Award

Notable Publications
Manna, S., Kimoto, M., Truong, J., Bommisetti, P., Peitz, A., Hirao, I., Hammond, M. C. “Systematic mutation and unnatural base pair incorporation improves riboswitch-based biosensor response time” ACS Sensors (2023) 8, 4468-4472. 10.1021/acssensors.3c01266 (preprint: 10.26434/chemrxiv-2023-xlth4)

Mumbleau, M. M., Meyer, M. R., Hammond, M. C. “Determination of in vitro and cellular turn-on kinetics for fluorogenic RNA aptamers” J Vis Exp (2022) 186, e64367. (Invited Paper)

Tan, Z.*, Chan, C. H.*, Maleska, M., Banuelos-Jara, B., Lohman, B. K., Ricks, N. J., Bond, D. R., Hammond, M. C. “The signaling pathway that cGAMP riboswitches found: analysis and application of riboswitches to study cGAMP signaling in Geobacter sulfurreducens” Int J Mol Sci (2022) 23, 1183. (Invited Paper)

Wright, T. A., Dippel, A. B., Hammond, M. C. “Cyclic di-GMP signaling gone astray: cGAMP signaling via Hypr GGDEF and HD-GYP enzymes” In Chou, S.-H., Guilliani, N., Lee, V., Romling, U. (ed), Microbial Cyclic Di-Nucleotide Signaling. (Invited Book Chapter)

Hallberg, Z. F.*, Chan, C. H.*, Wright, T. A., Kranzusch, P. J., Doxzen, K. W., Park, J. J., Bond, D. R., Hammond, M. C. “Structure and mechanism of a Hypr GGDEF enzyme that activates cGAMP signaling to control extracellular metal respiration” ELife (2019) e43959

Truong, J., Hsieh, Y. F., Jia, G., Hammond, M. C. “Circular permutation strategies for engineering RNA-based fluorescent biosensors”, Methods (2018) 143, 102-109. (Invited Paper)

Pan, Y., Duncombe, T. A., Kellenberger, C. A., Hammond, M. C., Herr, A. E. “High-throughput electrophoretic mobility shift assays for quantitative analysis of molecular binding reactions” Anal Chem (2014) 86, 10357-10364.

Hickey, S. F., Hammond, M. C. “Structure-guided design of fluorescent S-adenosylmethionine analogs for a high-throughput screen to target SAM-I riboswitch RNAs” Chem Biol (2014) 21, 345-356.