Shawn Chen, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Molecular and Cellular Biology Program
Department of Biological Sciences
320
740-597-3112 (O), 740-597-3113(L)
E-mail: chens@ohio.edu
Research Interests
My research interests are in two areas: microbial biochemistry and RNA molecular biology. We study antibiotic-producing actinomycetes. The subjects are antibiotic biosynthetic pathways and enzymatic mechanisms; regulatory networks of antibiotic production in Streptomyces; diversity and interaction of actinomycetes in microbial communities.
The
Chen Lab
The
Chen Lab The
Chen’ Lab
Natural Product Biosynthesis
Actinomycetes including Streptomyces are versatile chemists capable of synthesizing secondary metabolites that have diverse complex structures. Natural products with microbial origins are widely used as antibiotics in modern medicine. We are interested in the biosynthetic pathways of these natural products in bacteria and the biotechnological potential. Molecular basis of the enzyme based catalysis will be explored to engineer novel compounds that can find use as drugs for treating various diseases or chemical probes for studying basic biological processes.
Gene Regulation of Antibiotic Production in Streptomyces
Streptomyces are multicellular organisms with the remarkably complicated morphology and physiology. In a Streptomyces colony, while the vegetative mycelia forage for nutrients in solid substrates, cells exhausting nutrients rise to the aerial mycelia that eventually become fragmented to generate spores for reproduction and dispersal. Antibiotic production is initiated at the transition between these two phases. The regulatory network of gene expression in Streptomyces is extremely complex involving hundreds of protein and RNA regulators. We are interested in specific functions of these regulatory genes as well as global views of the network that links environmental and developmental signals to the biosynthetic pathways of secondary metabolism.
Diversity of Actinomycetes and Bioprospecting
Streptomyces and the related
actinomycetes have always been in the center of exploitable biology. While new genes, enzymes and pathways
are continually discovered in various streptomycetes, several fundamental
biological questions remain, such as that a natural carrier of Streptomyces is yet to be
characterized. The advent of new genomic technologies has set a stage to study
the diversity of actinomycetes in a microbial community. We are exploring
several environmental niches harboring Streptomyces.
Novel microorganisms identified will further our understanding of this
fascinating group of bacteria.
This is a highly interdisciplinary research program involving molecular biology, biochemistry/chemistry, microbiology, genetics, bioinformatics, genomics, bioengineering and several new disciplines such as chemical biology, synthetic biology and systems biology. I invite graduate and undergraduate students who are interested in these areas to join my laboratory.
Recent Publications
Supekova L, Supek F, Lee, J, Chen S, Gray N, Pezacki JP, Schultz PG. Identification of human kinases involved in HCV replication by siRNA library screen. J. Bio. Chem. (2008). 283(1): 29-36.
Liu W, Brock A, Chen S, Chen S-B, Schultz PG. Incorporate unnatural amino acids into proteins in mammalian cells. Nature Methods (2007), 4(3): 239-244.
Chen S, Schultz PG, Brock A. An improved system for generation and analysis of unnatural amino acids incorporated proteins in Saccharomyces cerevisae. J. Mol. Biol. (2007), 371(1):112-122.
Summerer D, Chen S, Wu N, Deiters A, Chin JW, Schultz PG. A genetically encoded fluorescent amino acid. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A (2006), 103(26): 9785-9786.
Sannes-Lowery
KA, Cummins LL, Chen S, Drader
JJ, Hofstadler SA. High throughput drug discovery with ESI-FTICR. Int. J. of
Mass Spectrometry (2004), 238 (2): 197-206.
Chen S, Zhang A, Blyn LB, Storz G. MicC, a new small RNA regulates outer membrane protein OmpC at post-transcriptional level. J. Bacteriology (2004), 186 (20): 6689-6697.
Cummins LL, Chen S, Blyn LB, Sannes-Lowery KA, Drader JJ, Griffey RH, Hofstadler, SA. Multitarget affinity/specificity screening of natural products: finding and characterizing high affinity ligand from complex mixtures by using high performance mass spectrometry. J. of Nat. Prod. (2003), 66 (9): 1186-1190.
Chen S, Lesnik EA, Hall TA, Sampath R, Griffey RH, Ecker DJ, Blyn LB. A Bioinformatics approach to discover small RNA genes in E. coli genome. BioSystems (2002). 65:157-177.
Cropp A, Chen S, Liu H, Zhang W, Reynolds KA. Genetic approaches for controlling ratios of related polyketide products in fermentation processes. J. Industrial Microbiol. Biotechnol. (2001), 27(6):368-377.
Chen S, Roberts JB, Sherman DH, Reynolds KA. The S. venezuelae pikAV gene contains a transcription unit essential for expression of enzymes involved in glycosylation of narbonolide and 10-deoxymethynolide. Gene (2001), 263: 255-264.