Junfeng Huang

Dr. Huang earned his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences from September 2010 to June 2016. He conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago from September 2016 to May 2017, and then at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from May 2017 to September 2021. He served as an Associate Research Fellow at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences from October 2021 to June 2023, and has been an Associate Research Fellow at Guangzhou National Laboratory since July 2023. Dr. Huang has been engaged in the development of novel technologies and methods for protein post-translational modification analysis. In the area of glycosylation analysis, he developed a peptide N-terminal protection strategy that increased the proportion of identified glycopeptides with N-terminal S/T from 1.2% to 13.9% in hydrazide-based glycopeptide enrichment, and developed a hydroxylamine-assisted reversible hydrazide chemistry method that improved the mass spectrometric identification of glycopeptides. By exploiting both the shared phosphate group properties and hydrophilicity differences between M6P-glycopeptides and phosphopeptides, he developed a hydrophilic and electrostatic dual-functional Ti⁴⁺-IMAC material that enabled successful enrichment and separation of these two modified peptide species, a work that was selected as a cover feature. Subsequently, he integrated the Ti-IMAC enrichment workflow to achieve simultaneous enrichment and separation of various glycopeptides, phosphopeptides, and M6P-glycopeptides based on their similarities and differences in physicochemical properties. Notably, he discovered for the first time that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein contains M6P glycosylation, expanding the understanding of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein glycosylation and suggesting a potential new route for viral entry via M6P receptors. His related findings have been published in journals including Analytical Chemistry, Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, and TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry.

Selected publications:
1. Junfeng Huang, Jing Dong, Xudong Shi, Zhengwei Chen, Yusi Cui, Xiaoyan Liu, Mingliang Ye, Lingjun Li. Dual-functional titanium (IV) immobilized metal affinity chromatography enables large-scale profiling of protein mannose-6-phosphate glycosylation and reveals its predominant substrates. Analytical Chemistry, 2019, 91(18): 11589-11597.
2. Junfeng Huang, Xiaoyan Liu, Danqing Wang, Yusi Cui, Xudong Shi, Jing Dong, Mingliang Ye, Lingjun Li. Dual-functional Ti(IV)-IMAC material enables simultaneous enrichment and separation of diverse glycopeptides and phosphopeptides. Analytical Chemistry, 2021, 93(24): 8568-8576.
3. Junfeng Huang, Hao Wan, Yating Yao, Jinan Li, Kai Cheng, Jiawei Mao, Jin Chen, Yan Wang, Hongqiang Qin, Weibing Zhang, Mingliang Ye, Hanfa Zou. Highly efficient release of glycopeptides from hydrazide beads by hydroxylamine assisted PNGase F deglycosylation for N-glycoproteome analysis. Analytical Chemistry, 2015, 87(20): 10199-10204.
4. Junfeng Huang, Danqing Wang, Richard David Shipman, Zexin Zhu, Yuan Liu, Lingjun Li*. Simultaneous enrichment and separation of neutral and sialyl glycopeptides of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein enabled by dual-functionalized Ti-IMAC material. Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, 2021, 413: 7295-7303.
5. Zhengwei Chen, Junfeng Huang#, Lingjun Li*. Recent advances in mass spectrometry (MS)-based glycoproteomics in complex biological samples. TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry, 2019, 118: 880-892.