Yandu Lu

50. Executive Committee Member, International Society for Applied Phycology
50. Executive Committee Member, China Algae Industry Association
50. Executive Director, Subcommittee of Marine Biotechnology in Chinese Society for Oceanology & Limnology
50. Group Leader, Algal Bioactive & Bioproducts
50. Deputy Dean, School of Marine Biology and Fisheries, Hainan University
50. Director, Research & Engineering Center for Marine Bioactives & Bioproducts, Hainan Province
50. State Key Laboratory of Marine Resource Utilization in South China Sea
50. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0136-2252

Find more at http://www.scbioengineering.com/

E-MAIL: ydlu[at]hainanu.edu.cn

 

Research Interests

Functional genomics and trait optimization of microalgae have been the underlying theme throughout my research career. I work on microalgae but the general concepts and many of the mechanisms are common to all parts of the tree of life. To begin with I focused on individual genes but advanced technology and computing now allows analysis of complex gene networks. We can now begin to address the question of emergent properties in which cells and organisms are more than the simple sum of their parts so that molecular biology is truly ‘biology’. My group has become interested in synthetic biology - the application of genome editing to explain nature and improve nature. Over the years the context of my interest in gene regulation, trait optimization, and value-added compound production has involved biosynthetic pathway, photosynthesis, industrial-scale cultivation, and now artificial photosynthetic cells.

Honors, Services and Fellowships

President Scholarship of CAS, 2010 (the highest honor for Ph. D students of CAS)

Pollyanna Chu Award for Outstanding Doctors of CAS, 2009

Serve as an Associated Editor of Tropic Plants, and a review for a variety of journals including Nature Communications, ISME Journal, Trends serials, Biotechnology Advance, Critical Review in Biotechnology, Current Opinion serials, Plant Physiology, Environmental Science & Technology, Metabolic Engineering, Communications Biology, Algal Research, Journal of Applied Phycology, Journal of Phycology, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, iScience,  Plant Pathology, Microbial Cell Factories, Journal of Genetics and Genomics, Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering, and Journal of Plant Growth Regulation.

Selected publications (^#equal contributor; *correspondence)

1. N Ashraf, F Ahmad, Y Lu* (2023) Synergy between microalgae and microbiome in polluted waters. Trends in Microbiology 10.1016/j.tim.2022.06.004

2. W Zhou, X Zhang, A Wang, L Yang, Q Gan, L Yi, R.E. Summons, J.K. Volkman, Y Lu^* (2022) A widespread sterol methyltransferase participates in the biosynthesis of both C4α- and C4β-methyl sterols. Journal of the American Chemical Society 10.1021/jacs.2c01401

3. Y Lu^*, Q Gan, M Iwai, A Alboresi, A Burlacot, O Dautermann, H Takahashi, T Crisanto, G Peltier, T Morosinotto, A Melis, K Niyogi^* (2021) Role of an ancient light-harvesting protein of PSI in light absorption and photoprotection. Nature Communications 10.1038/s41467-021-20967-1

Selected grants

1. PI, 2021-2024, the Intergovernmental Project of National Key Research and Development Program of China (2021YFE0110100)

2. PI, 2021-2026, the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2021YFA0909600)

3. PI, 2024-2027, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32370380)

4. PI, 2021-2025, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32060061)

5. PI, 2021-2026, the Key Research and Development Program of Hainan Province (ZDYF2022XDNY140)

6. PI, 2019-2020, the Project of China National Intellectual Property Administration (2019-2021-1-14)

7. PI, 2017-2020, the Project of Innovation & Development of Marine Economy, Ministry of Natural Resources of China (HHCL201803)