Research Area

Bioengineering

Research Interest

Synthetic biology Biomaterials Biomedical engineering (BME) Bioengineering

Profile

Yi Kuang received her B.S. in Biotechnology from Sun Yat-Sen University and her M.Phil in Bioengineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She obtained her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Brandeis University under the supervision of Prof. Bing Xu, studying controlled supramolecular assembly. She worked at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application at Kyoto University, first as an Interdisciplinary Human Frontier Science Program Postdoctoral Fellow and then as a JSPS Research Fellow. She joined HKUST in 2018 as assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2024.

Research Summary

The research are focused on the engineering of high performance synthetic mRNAs for mRNA vaccine and for mRNA-based logic gate.

Five Representative Publications

1. Hu, Y.; Li, C.; Lu, Q.;Kuang, Y.* “Multiplex MiRNA Reporting Platform for Real-Time Profiling of Living Cells” Cell Chem. Bio., 2024, 31, 1-13.
2. Li, C.; Liang, Z.; Liu, L.;Kuang Y.* “Intracellular Molecules Induced Extracellular Peptide Self-Assembly for Efficient and Effective In Situ Cell Purification” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2023, e202306533.
3. Li, C.; Liang, Z.; Hu, Y.; Zhang, H.; Setiasabda, K. D.; Li, J.; Ma, S.; Xia, X.;Kuang, Y.* “Cytidine-Containing Tails Robustly Enhance And Prolong Protein Production Of Synthetic mRNA In Cell And In Vivo” Mol. Ther. Nucleic Acid, 2022, OMTN1738.
4. Lu Q.; Hu Y.; Li C. Y.,Kuang Y.* “Aptamer-Array-Guided Protein Assembly Enhances Synthetic mRNA Switch Performance” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2022, e202207319.
5. Parr C.P.C.; Wada S.; Kotake K.; Kameda S.; Matsuura S.; Sakashita S.; Park S.; Sugiyama H.;Kuang Y.;* Saito H.* “N¹-Methylpseudouridine substitution enhances the performance of synthetic mRNA switches in cells” Nucleic Acids Res., 2020, 48(6), e35.