Neela Yennawar

Director, Biomolecular Interactions Core Facility; Co-Director, X-Ray Crystallography and Scattering Core Facility; Research Professor

Neela Yennawar

Research Summary

Biological calorimetry, protein characterization, molecular modeling, X-ray crystallography, and small-angle X-ray scattering.

Huck Affiliations

Links

Most Recent Publications

Phosphorylation modulates secondary structure of intrinsically disorder regions in RNA polymerase II

Wei Chen, Tatiana N. Laremore, Neela H. Yennawar, Scott A. Showalter, 2025, Journal of Biological Chemistry

Identification and characterization of shifted G•U wobble pairs resulting from alternative protonation of RNA.

M Saon, C Douds, A Veenis, A Pearson, Neela Yennawar, P Bevilacqua, 2025, bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology

Using Modelling of and Modelling For in a Teacher Professional Development Workshop to Learn how Molecular Biologist Model

Amber Cesare, Kathleen Hill, Neela Yennawar, Hemant Yennawar, Amie Boal, Cody Lloyd, Jennifer A. Gruber, Lisa Shannon, 2025,

Non-lytic spread of poliovirus requires the nonstructural protein 3CD

David Aponte-Diaz, Jayden M. Harris, Tongjia Ella Kang, Victoria Korboukh, Mohamad S. Sotoudegan, Jennifer Lynn Gray, Neela H. Yennawar, Ibrahim M. Moustafa, Andrew Macadam, Craig Eugene Cameron, 2025, mBio

Maize unstable factor for orange1 encodes a nuclear protein that affects redox accumulation during kernel development

D Chatterjee, Z Zhang, P Lin, P Wang, G Sidhu, Neela H. Yennawar, J Hsieh, P Chen, R Song, B Meyers, Surinder Chopra, 2024, Plant Cell

Structural Evidence for DUF512 as a Radical S-Adenosylmethionine Cobalamin-Binding Domain

Bo Wang, Amy E. Solinski, Matthew I. Radle, Olivia M. Peduzzi, Hayley L. Knox, Jiayuan Cui, Ravi K. Maurya, Neela H. Yennawar, Squire J. Booker, 2024, ACS Bio and Med Chem Au on p. 319-330

Molecular insights into the interaction between a disordered protein and a folded RNA

R Mitra, E Usher, S Dedeoğlu, Selin Dedeoǧlu, M Crotteau, O Fraser, Neela H. Yennawar, V Gadkari, B Ruotolo, A Holehouse, L Salmon, Scott A. Showalter, Bardwell JCA, James C.A. Bardwell, 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on p. e2409139121

Disordered regions in proteusin peptides guide post-translational modification by a flavin-dependent RiPP brominase

Nguyet A. Nguyen, F. N.U. Vidya, Neela H. Yennawar, Hongwei Wu, Andrew C. McShan, Vinayak Agarwal, 2024, Nature Communications

Understanding the stability of a plastic-degrading Rieske iron oxidoreductase system

Jessica Lusty Beech, Anjani K. Maurya, Ronivaldo Rodrigues da Silva, Emmanuel Akpoto, Arun Asundi, Julia Ann Fecko, Neela H. Yennawar, Ritimukta Sarangi, Christopher Tassone, Thomas M. Weiss, Jennifer L. DuBois, 2024, Protein Science

Characterization of recombinant human lactoferrin expressed in Komagataella phaffii

Xiaoning Lu, Chad Cummings, Udodili A. Osuala, Neela H. Yennawar, Kevin E.W. Namitz, Brittney Hellner, Pamela B. Besada-Lombana, Ross D. Peterson, Anthony J. Clark, 2024, The Analyst on p. 3636-3650

Most-Cited Papers

Transaminase Inhibition by 2-Hydroxyglutarate Impairs Glutamate Biosynthesis and Redox Homeostasis in Glioma

Samuel K. McBrayer, Jared R. Mayers, Gabriel J. DiNatale, Diana D. Shi, Januka Khanal, Abhishek A. Chakraborty, Kristopher A. Sarosiek, Kimberly J. Briggs, Alissa K. Robbins, Tomasz Sewastianik, Sarah J. Shareef, Benjamin A. Olenchock, Seth J. Parker, Kensuke Tateishi, Jessica B. Spinelli, Mirazul Islam, Marcia C. Haigis, Ryan E. Looper, Keith L. Ligon, Bradley E. Bernstein, Ruben D. Carrasco, Daniel P. Cahill, John M. Asara, Christian M. Metallo, Neela H. Yennawar, Matthew G. Vander Heiden, William G. Kaelin, 2018, Cell on p. 101-116.e25

Enhanced rare-earth separation with a metal-sensitive lanmodulin dimer

J Mattocks, J Jung, C Lin, Z Dong, Neela Yennawar, E Featherston, E Featherson, C Kang-Yun, T Hamilton, D Park, Amie Boal, Joseph A. Cotruvo, J Cotruvo Jr., J Cotruvo, Jr, 2023, Nature on p. 87-93

Inhibition of pancreatic lipase by black tea theaflavins: Comparative enzymology and in silico modeling studies

S Glisan, K Grove, Neela Yennawar, Joshua D. Lambert, 2017, Food Chemistry on p. 296-300

Crystal Structure of the LSD1/CoREST Histone Demethylase Bound to Its Nucleosome Substrate

S Kim, J Zhu, Neela Yennawar, P Eek, Song Tan, 2020, Molecular Cell on p. 903-914.e4

Enhanced performance and stability in DNA-perovskite heterostructure-based solar cells

Yuchen Hou, K Wang, Dong Yang, Yuanyuan Jiang, Neela Yennawar, Ke Wang, Mohan Sanghadasa, C Wu, Shashank Priya, 2019, ACS Energy Letters on p. 2646--2655

Precise Manipulation and Patterning of Protein Crystals for Macromolecular Crystallography Using Surface Acoustic Waves

Feng Guo, Weijie Zhou, Peng Li, Zhangming Mao, Neela H. Yennawar, Jarrod B. French, Tony Jun Huang, 2015, Small on p. 2733-2737

The GlcN6P cofactor plays multiple catalytic roles in the glmS ribozyme

J Bingaman, S Zhang, D Stevens, Neela H. Yennawar, S Hammes-Schiffer, Philip C. Bevilacqua, 2017, Nature Chemical Biology on p. 439-445

Cooperative RNA Folding under Cellular Conditions Arises from Both Tertiary Structure Stabilization and Secondary Structure Destabilization

K Leamy, Neela Yennawar, Philip C. Bevilacqua, 2017, Biochemistry on p. 3422-3433

Identification of a mouse Lactobacillus johnsonii strain with deconjugase activity against the FXR antagonist T-β-MCA

M DiMarzio, B Rusconi, Neela Yennawar, M Eppinger, Andrew D. Patterson, Edward G. Dudley, 2017, PLoS One on p. e0183564

Structural basis for tRNA methylthiolation by the radical SAM enzyme MiaB

Olga A. Esakova, Tyler Grove, Neela Yennawar, Arthur Arcinas, Bo Wang, Wang, Carsten Krebs, Steven Almo, Squire Booker, 2021, Nature on p. 566-570

News Articles Featuring Neela Yennawar

Jul 15, 2025

Optical tweezers help elevate single-molecule research at Penn State

The instrument, supported by a new NIH infrastructure grant, uses laser light to ‘tweeze’ tiny objects like DNA molecules and proteins.

Full Article

Apr 15, 2024

Huck Leadership Fellows selected for 2024-25

For the 2024-2025 academic year, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences has appointed Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering Scott Medina, Professor of Statistics Lingzhou Xue, and Associate Professor of Surgery Dino Ravnic to be Huck Leadership Fellows.

Full Article

Feb 28, 2024

New single molecule biophysics equipment expands research capability

A new addition to the Huck's instrumentation portfolio is expanding the options available to life science researchers, and uses powerful lasers as tweezers to manipulate individual molecules..

Full Article

Jan 25, 2024

Undergraduate research may contribute to COVID-19 treatments

Brandywine undergraduates worked with professor to investigate potential new therapies to inhibit an enzyme that helps the coronavirus replicate

Full Article

Jun 26, 2023

Neela Yennawar and Scott Lindner selected as 2023 Huck Leadership Fellows

Launched in 2022, the Huck Leadership Fellows Program was developed for faculty members seeking to sharpen their leadership skills with an opportunity for exposure to senior leadership within the interdisciplinary research unit.

Full Article

May 31, 2023

A protein mines, sorts rare earths better than humans, paving way for green tech

Rare earth elements, like neodymium and dysprosium, are a critical component to almost all modern technologies, from smartphones to hard drives, but they are notoriously hard to separate from the Earth’s crust and from one another.

Full Article

Oct 18, 2022

Newly engineered protein could be used to develop adaptation-proof COVID vaccine

A vaccine design approach that could protect against new variants of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — but also potentially protects against other coronaviruses is one step closer to reality as a result of research at Penn State College of Medicine.

Full Article

Jan 13, 2022

Core facilities director brings more than technical advice to research

Directors of the core facilities at Penn State’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences are more than expert technicians — they are also researchers in their own right. And though their unique contributions are not always consistently recognized within the broader community, faculty researchers who work in the core facilities are well aware of these unsung heroes' many impressive insights.

Full Article

Aug 20, 2019

Penn State Chemistry Alum Recognized with Young Scientists Award

Kathleen Leamy has been awarded the 2019 Gordon Hammes Scholar Award, based on a 2018 article she co-authored with the Huck Institutes' Neela Yennawar and Phillip Bevilacqua.

Full Article