Ting Lu, an assistant professor of bioengineering, has been selected for a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research. Lu, who is also a faculty researcher at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois, is interested in the design, construction and exploitation of bacterial gene regulatory networks for cellular functionality programming.
Written by Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office
Ting Lu, an assistant professor of bioengineering, has been selected for a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research. Lu, who is also a faculty researcher at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois, is interested in the design, construction and exploitation of bacterial gene regulatory networks for cellular functionality programming.
Ting Lu“Foodborne illness is one of the leading public health challenges, causing roughly 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths in the United States every year," Lu said. "It is also a significant threat to the U.S. Navy, hindering the ability of deployed forces to respond to emergencies and maintain fleet operational readiness.
"Efforts have been made toward food quality improvement as well as pathogen detection and illness treatment," Lu added. "However, the strategies are unsuitable for active military because food quality control is limited in battlefields and pathogen detection may not be steadily available but any illness outbreak is unaffordable. Instead, warfighters need a solution that will keep them healthy and effective even when they occasionally have foods with a reduced quality."
In this proof-of-concept study, Lu and his research team is developing a strategy for warfighters by constructing designer probiotic cocktails—mixtures of custom-tailored probiotic bacteria—to reduce potential food-borne illness.
"Using bacterial pathogens as model foodborne pathogens, we will achieve our goal by engineering probiotic strains to inhibit the growth of specific pathogens and also to enhance host tolerance to these pathogens."'
Lu, who is also affiliated with the Department of Physics, joined the Illinois faculty in 2011. He earned his PhD in biophysics at the University of California at San Diego, and his bachelor's degree in physics from Zhejiang University, China.