Eamon and Guohao Join Lab
Eamon Jahani and Guohao Liang join our lab! Eamon and Guohao are both undergraduates at UC Irvine and will be working on targeted mutagenesis in yeast and mammalian cell systems.
Category Archives: Lab News
Rishi is named a 2016 JCC Fellow
Rishi Jajoo was just awarded a three-year fellowship from the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research! This highly competitive and prestigious fellowship will support Rishi’s work on mitochondrial genetic […]
Chang receives joint appointment in the Department of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry
Prof. Liu is now a joint faculty member in UCI’s Department of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry. We look forward to more collaborations with MB&B faculty and students.
Garri Arzumanyan Joins Group
Garri Arzumanyan officially joins our group as a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering. Garri received his B.S. in Bioengineering from UCSD, where he worked primarily in Bernhard Palsson‘s lab doing enzyme […]
Joey Grotts to Join Group
Joey Grotts, who will graduate from Pitzer in May, will join our lab as a Jr. Specialist in June. Joey did great undergraduate research on protein engineering in the context […]
Kelsey Fung to Join Group
Kelsey Fung, a recent UCI Biomedical Engineering grad, will join our lab as a Jr. Specialist this month. She will be working on projects involving molecular biology and cell culture and will […]
Margaret Mulcare to Join Group
We are delighted to welcome Margaret Mulcare, who will join this month as an administrative assistant to Chang and the lab! Margaret received her BA in Classics from the University […]
Chang Awarded Sloan Research Fellowship
Chang is named a Sloan Research Fellow in the field of Computational and Evolutionary Molecular Biology. Thank you Sloan Foundation for supporting our research!
Rishi’s PhD Work Published in Science
Rishi’s PhD work on mitochondrial nucleoid segregation, done in Johan Paulsson’s group at Harvard, just came out in Science! Congrats Rishi!
Xiang’s Paper Published
Benjamin Schwessinger (of the Ronald Lab) and Xiang just had their paper on the optimized expression and application of sulfated peptides that trigger plant immunity published in Integrative Biology. It will […]
Theresa Berens Loveless to Join Group
We are delighted that Theresa Berens Loveless will join our group as a postdoctoral fellow in January! Theresa is finishing her PhD in David Toczyski‘s group at UCSF, where she has done amazing work identifying […]
Chang wins NIH New Innovator Award!
Chang is named a 2015 NIH Director’s New Innovator! This generous award will support the Liu Lab’s research on orthogonal replication and rapid continuous evolution. Thank you NIH Director! (UCI has a nice […]
Liu Lab Hosts Artist-in-Residence
Along with the Beall Center for Art + Technology and the Newkirk Center for Science and Society, we are excited to host Anna Dumitriu for the next two weeks and other times throughout […]
Welcome Muaeen Obadi
Muaeen Obadi, a recent UCI grad, joins our lab as a Junior Specialist. He will be in charge of ensuring that our lab runs smoothly and will help with molecular biology […]
Chang is named a 2015 Beckman Young Investigator!
Chang is named a 2015 Beckman Young Investigator. This generous award will support the Liu Lab’s research on orthogonal genetics. Thanks Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation!
Sulfated Activator of Rice Plant Immunity Published
Xiang’s work on heterologous expression of sulfated peptides is published in Science Advances as part of a tour de force effort to identify an activator of an important innate immune receptor […]
Pratik Shah to Join Group
We are excited that Pratik Shah will join our group as a postdoctoral fellow starting in September. Pratik did his Ph.D. at the Center for Synthetic Biology of the University of Copenhagen, where […]
Chang wins DuPont Young Professor Award
Chang wins a DuPont Young Professor Award to support our research on orthogonal replication and rapid evolution. Thanks DuPont!
Welcome Ryan
Ryan Rezvani, who graduated from UC Berkeley where he worked directly with Chang (when he was there), Adam Arkin, Mikhail Shapiro, and David Schaffer, joins our group as a PhD student in […]
Chang Gives Keynote Speech at PKU
Chang recently returned from Beijing, where he gave a keynote at the student-organized quantitative biology symposium at Peking University. Thanks for a great time!
Arjun’s Commentary on Biocontainment Published
Arjun’s invited commentary on biocontainment with reengineered genetic codes is published in ChemBioChem. Nice job!
Liu Lab Awarded ERASynBio/NSF Grant
The Liu Lab has been awarded a major grant to develop orthogonal DNA replication for XNA incorporation. The Liu Lab will be the US member of an international consortium aimed at developing […]
Liu Lab Awarded DARPA Grant
The Liu Lab has been awarded a major grant from DARPA to slow down evolution using orthogonal DNA replication. Thanks DARPA!
Our First Postdoctoral Fellow
Rishi Jajoo joins our group! Rishi comes to us from the Paulsson Lab at Harvard Medical School, where his PhD work in Systems Biology resulted in beautiful insights into mitochondrial segregation dynamics and nucleoid […]
Welcome Jimmy and Kyle
Jimmy Duong and Kyle Su start as new undergraduate researchers in our group. Welcome!
New Position #2 Open
We want to hire a postdoctoral fellow to lead a project aimed at slowing down gene evolution using orthogonal DNA replication (in contrast to speeding up evolution for many of our other projects). The goal […]
New Position Available
We want to hire a postdoctoral fellow to lead a project aimed at 1) understanding the biochemistry of our orthogonal DNA replication system and 2) polymerase engineering. The larger goal of this project is to […]
Welcome Ziwei
Ziwei Zhong officially joins our team. Ziwei is a student in the MSTP (MD/PhD) program at UC Irvine and recently completed his first two years of medical school. In his PhD […]
Xiang’s Review Published
Xiang’s review paper on Expanded Genetic Codes is published at ChemBioChem. Congrats!
Welcome Cyndi
We welcome Cyndi Wang to the lab! Cyndi will be an undergraduate staff member in charge several lab tasks.
Keoni Featured on the Local News
A fun story on whiz kid Keoni Gandall in our group aired on the local cable news. To see it on youtube, click here. (The piece on Keoni is 7:47-17:00.)
Xiang and Alex Receive Honorable Mentions from NSF
Xiang and Alex both receive honorable mentions on their NSF-GRFP applications. Congrats!
Xiang Wins Poster Award at Synberc
Xiang’s and Justin’s poster on the directed evolution of multiply sulfated anti-HIV antibodies using expanded genetic codes wins a poster award at the 2014 Synberc Spring Symposium at UC Berkeley. Congrats […]
Justin Wins UROP Award
Justin wins an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program award to support his project on the directed evolution of anti-HIV antibodies using expanded genetic codes. Congrats Justin!
Arjun’s Paper Featured on Cover and Elsewhere
Our paper on a new replication system for targeted evolution is featured on the cover of the March 2014 issue of Nature Chemical Biology. It is featured as one of a collection […]
Arjun’s Paper Published
Our lab’s first major work, describing a new genetic system for evolution, was just published in Nature Chemical Biology. Congrats to Arjun!
Paper Makes Cover of ACS Synthetic Biology
A recent paper on noise attenuation in biological circuits, co-authored by Prof. Qing Nie’s group and Prof. Liu, makes the cover of ACS Synthetic Biology. Congrats!
Prof. Liu Receives Joint Appointment in Chemistry
Prof. Liu is now a joint faculty member in UCI’s Department of Chemistry. We look forward to more collaborations with chemistry faculty and students.
Prof. Liu Quoted in National Geographic and Healthline News
Prof. Liu was quoted in “‘Find and Replace’ Across an Entire Genome” by Ed Yong in National Geographic, and in “Large-Scale Editing of Genetic Code Now Possible” by Shawn Radcliffe […]
Keoni Wins at National Science Fair
Keoni won 1st place in the Science category at the National Broadcom MASTERS Competition. He got a personal tour of the Oval Office from President Obama and a good chunk of prize […]
New Affiliations for the Liu Lab
Prof. Liu is a new affiliated PI at Synberc, an NSF-sponsored Synthetic Biology Center directed by Jay Keasling. Synberc brings together some of the top synthetic biology labs in the United States […]
Welcome Alex
Alex Javanpour joins our team! Alex comes to us from UC Berkeley, where he majored in Bioengineering. For his undergraduate research, Alex used molecular dynamics models to study HIV RNA nuclear […]
Welcome Keoni
Keoni Gandall, a precocious 14-year-old do-it-yourself synthetic biologist, joins our lab. Keoni recently took first place in the Microbiology division at the California State Science Fair with his project Engineering […]
New Synthetic Biology Book Published
A new book called Synthetic Biology, edited by Huimin Zhao, was just published. It is a thoughtful collection of articles contributed by several synthetic biologists including Prof. Liu.
Welcome Kendall
Kendall Kearns joins our lab. Though Kendall is only a freshman, she gained much experience in synthetic biology in high school as a member of UCSF’s iGEM team. Welcome!
Welcome Xiang
Xiang Li joins our group. Xiang comes to us from UC Santa Cruz, where he majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and studied nanopore-based sensors in Nader Pourmand‘s group. Welcome!
Welcome Adrian and Justin
Adrian Arrieta and Justin Hitomi join our team. Adrian, who is a Junior Specialist in our lab, comes to us from UC Berkeley, where he recently graduated with a degree in […]
Welcome Arjun
Arjun Ravikumar is the first graduate student to join our team! Arjun moves to UCI from the UCSF/UCB BioE graduate program, where he worked with then Miller Fellow Chang Liu, […]
Recent Paper Featured
Our recent synthetic biology paper on the creation of versatile RNA transcriptional regulators was featured in the News and Views section of Nature Methods. Thanks to Jeff Tabor for the thoughtful commentary.
Our First Gel
An image of the first DNA gel run in our new lab!
Liu Laboratory for Synthetic Evolution 
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