The research in our lab is centered around Synthetic Biology with expanding applications in biotechnology, health and environment. Our interests include both foundational and applied synthetic biology by focusing on three synergistic themes, i.e. the enabling technologies, genetic circuit design, and biotech and biomedical applications.
1. Synthetic biology enabling technologies
We develop new gene regulation technologies along the central dogma of biology including transcriptional (CRISPR-enabled regulation), post-transcriptional (split intron) and post-translational (split intein) regulation tools. In addition, we mine and engineer new modular and orthogonal genetic parts to expand the currently limited toolbox in synthetic biology. New high-quality biopart libraries and online database (BioPartsDB) are being established to facilitate the development and sharing of genetic materials, data and tools among the communities.
2. Genetic circuit design for cell programming
We design and construct synthetic genetic circuits to program living cells with customized functions using the foundational bioparts and tools developed. The genetic programs are diverse including genetic logic gates, amplifiers, sensors, advanced information processing circuits, with an aim towards programming cells as what we can program computer today. New biocircuit design paradigms and platform are being developed by exploiting design principles in existing engineering and biological systems such as modularity, orthogonality, standardization, modelling and automation to increase the predictability, scalability and efficiency of cell programming.
3. Applications in biotechnology and biomedicine
We apply the enabling tools and circuits aforementioned to develop low-cost, point-of-use cell-based or cell-free biosensors for environmental contaminants (e.g. arsenic) and health-indicating biomarkers in various samples in low-resource settings. In addition, we engineer benigh bacteria with bespoke sensing and therapeutic circuits to selectively target and kill solid tumor cells by revitalizing the host immune system towards new generation bacterial cancer immunotherapy. Further, new intelligent microbial cell factories can be built by dynamically monitoring cellular states and regulating the pathway genes.
