Daniel Yoo, PhD
Postdoctoral associate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tuesday, Jan. 27
Time: 9–9:50 a.m.
Location: Biodesign B, B105-A
Faculty host: Xiaojun Tian
Abstract
In contrast to the gut, flora from the skin remain relatively unexplored. Our microbial partners help shape immunity, metabolism and disease resistance as part of an extended phenotype. The skin microbiome has evolved unique adaptations to thrive in its microenvironment over the host’s lifetime, outcompeting invaders where laboratory strains consistently fail. The challenge lies in engineering these native microorganisms to function effectively within or on their host.
My research program integrates synthetic biology and chemical biology to develop personalized microbial consortia that perform complex functions. My independent group will engineer human commensals — microbes that live on and within us — as programmable platforms for diagnostic biosensing, regenerative therapies and environmental biotechnology. We will also integrate novel computational tools tailored for the complex analysis, modeling and construction of our microbial platforms. In the long-term, we hope to explore foundational concepts regarding the host-microbe-environment axis and microbiome construction that push their capabilities beyond traditional biological boundaries.
Biosketch
Yoo is currently a postdoctoral associate in biological engineering in the laboratory of Professor Christopher Voigt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His postdoctoral research focused on engineering microbes for diverse applications. Yoo engineered human skin isolates to manipulate the skin’s surface chemistry through the degradation of skin metabolites and production of volatile terpenes. He also utilized a hybrid chemical-biological approach for converting dirty plastic waste into nutritious biomass supplemented with protein and biosynthesized micronutrients. Yoo received his PhD in chemistry under the mentorship of Professor Paramjit Arora at New York University. His graduate research focused on the design of chemically modified peptide mimetics to serve as inhibitors of protein-protein interactions, or PPIs, implicated in human disease.
