CBE Seminar (Zoom): Lessons from Molecular Evolution - From Origin of Life to Phage-based Nanomaterials

Abstract: Molecular evolution is a walk over a fitness landscape, in which populations explore sequence space through mutation and "climb" up fitness peaks. The topography of the fitness landscape governs potential pathways for evolution and determines whether fitness can be optimized by natural selection. We are making exhaustive maps of fitness landscapes for catalytic RNA (ribozymes) by combining in vitro selection with a massively parallel kinetic assay using high-throughput sequencing. In addition, we take advantage of the ongoing natural selection of phages in order to engineer phage-based nanomaterials for detection and killing of pathogenic bacteria. These nanomaterials combine evolutionarily optimized attachment strategies of phages with the controllable nature of nanomaterials to circumvent some obstacles to phage therapy.

Bio: Irene Chen is an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCSB. She received a bachelor's degree in chemistry and doctorate in biophysics from Harvard, and a medical degree from the Harvard-MIT program in Health Sciences and Technology. Her research group focuses on understanding the transition from chemistry to life by evolving functional RNA and building simple cell-like systems. Her group also studies potential applications of phages in biotechnology. She has been an investigator in the Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life since 2013 and has been named a Searle Scholar (2014), an NIH New Innovator (2016) and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar (2018).