The Jin Group

Yi Jin （金轶）took her BSc degree in Chemistry in 2005 from Xiamen University, China. In 2008, she obtained her MSc degree in Organic Chemistry after completing her Master's thesis in the group of Prof. Yufen Zhao （赵玉芬）, Academician of CAS, at Xiamen University, working on the synthesis of transition state analogue inhibitors of phosphoserine phosphatase and phosphopeptides. In 2008, she was awarded the prestigious Overseas Research Studentship (ORS) by British Council and came to the UK for her PhD under the guidance of Prof. Jon P. Waltho and Prof. G. Mike Blackburn at the University of Sheffield, UK (see the "Holy Grail or Trojan Horse" story behind). During this period, she expanded the usage of metal fluoride complexes as mimics of phosphoryl group in various key enzymes in cellular signal transduction in NMR and crystallography. She stayed in the same lab as a postdoc for 2 years working on the strain catalysis of DNA repairing enzyme UNG using multi-dimensional NMR. In 2014, she moved to the group of Prof. Gideon J. Davies, FRS, FMedSci in YSBL, University of York, UK, working on various carbohydrate processing enzymes, including the first glycosyl hydrolases in sulfo-glycolytic pathways,  the first mannosidase in GH134 family, and using activity based-probes to trap glucuronidases in action.

In May 2017, she was appointed as a University Research Fellow at Cardiff University to begin her independent research career. In August 2021, she was appointed as a Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Dale Fellow at Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, The University of Manchester.

Her research interests involve mechanistic studies and protein interactions of disease-relevant phosphoryl transfer enzymes and carbohydrate processing enzymes using bioinformatics, organic synthesis, chemical biology, molecular biology, NMR, and crystallographic approaches.