Jackie Chen

Current Research

Developing a system to evolve useful synthetic phages

Bacteriophages have been shown to be incredibly useful in both biotechnological and basic research applications. However, natural phages suffer from narrow host range, low efficacy, time-consuming and laborious isolation, and can carry undesirable or unannotated genes. In contrast, synthetic phages are more flexible and can be engineered to conform to specifications necessary for its application. The goal of my graduate thesis is to engineer synthetic phages with programmable properties through targeted gene diversification. Such an approach can be used to generate phages with altered host range, greater virulence, better stability, and other user-defined properties.