Chang Liu
@chang-c-liu.bsky.social
Prof. at UC Irvine developing specialized genetic systems for rapid evolution, protein engineering, and biology at large. Also at https://x.com/chang_c_liu
www.liulab.com
www.liulab.com
I am delighted to share this work, led by Miguel Alcantar and done in collaboration with Amgen, on the OrthoRep-driven evolution of computationally designed minibinders. Here, we focus not only on getting high affinity, but also on mapping sequence-affinity landscapes of diverse outcomes.
October 28, 2025 at 7:33 AM
I am delighted to share this work, led by Miguel Alcantar and done in collaboration with Amgen, on the OrthoRep-driven evolution of computationally designed minibinders. Here, we focus not only on getting high affinity, but also on mapping sequence-affinity landscapes of diverse outcomes.
I'm very sad to learn of Prof. Andrew D. Hanson's passing. Andrew was a pioneering plant (synthetic) biologist full of insight, clarity of thought, and vision. He was also exceptionally kind and wise. I will cherish our interactions and collaborations. blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/hosdept/2025...
Onwards and Upwards: Remembering Dr. Andrew D. Hanson - Horticultural Sciences Department
Honoring Dr. Andrew D. Hanson, Eminent Scholar and UF Hort Sci Professor, whose visionary research and mentorship shaped plant biology.
blogs.ifas.ufl.edu
September 13, 2025 at 10:43 PM
I'm very sad to learn of Prof. Andrew D. Hanson's passing. Andrew was a pioneering plant (synthetic) biologist full of insight, clarity of thought, and vision. He was also exceptionally kind and wise. I will cherish our interactions and collaborations. blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/hosdept/2025...
Reposted by Chang Liu
Excited to share our new preprint, which was years in the making! chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...
New reactions are typically developed by trial and error. How can we speed up this process? Read on to learn how we used DNA scaffolding to perform >500,000 parallel reactions on attomole scale.
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New reactions are typically developed by trial and error. How can we speed up this process? Read on to learn how we used DNA scaffolding to perform >500,000 parallel reactions on attomole scale.
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DNA-Scaffolded Ultrahigh-Throughput Reaction Screening
Discovering and optimizing reactions is central to synthetic chemistry. However, chemical reactions are traditionally screened using relatively low-throughput methods, prohibiting exploration of diver...
chemrxiv.org
August 14, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Excited to share our new preprint, which was years in the making! chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...
New reactions are typically developed by trial and error. How can we speed up this process? Read on to learn how we used DNA scaffolding to perform >500,000 parallel reactions on attomole scale.
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New reactions are typically developed by trial and error. How can we speed up this process? Read on to learn how we used DNA scaffolding to perform >500,000 parallel reactions on attomole scale.
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Reposted by Chang Liu
A new paper from @aliceyting.bsky.social reports on LaccID, an engineered laccase, that enables hydrogen peroxide-free proximity labeling and electron microscopy of cell surfaces
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Directed evolution of LaccID for cell surface proximity labeling and electron microscopy - Nature Chemical Biology
LaccID, an engineered laccase, enables hydrogen-peroxide-free proximity labeling and electron microscopy (EM) in mammalian cells. Notably, LaccID is selectively active at the cell surface, enabling th...
www.nature.com
August 1, 2025 at 7:51 PM
A new paper from @aliceyting.bsky.social reports on LaccID, an engineered laccase, that enables hydrogen peroxide-free proximity labeling and electron microscopy of cell surfaces
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Our new company, K2 Therapeutics, is off to the races to develop new antibody drugs that target multipass membrane proteins. We are hiring so check us out! www.k2-tx.com/home#careers
K2 Therapeutics
www.k2-tx.com
August 16, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Our new company, K2 Therapeutics, is off to the races to develop new antibody drugs that target multipass membrane proteins. We are hiring so check us out! www.k2-tx.com/home#careers
Happy to see this new T7 replicon based orthogonal replication system in E. coli. Congrats to the Diercks and Schultz lab teams at Scripps Research! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
An orthogonal T7 replisome for continuous hypermutation and accelerated evolution in E. coli
Systems that perform continuous hypermutation of designated genes without compromising the integrity of the host genome can substantially accelerate the evolution of new or enhanced protein functions....
www.science.org
August 8, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Happy to see this new T7 replicon based orthogonal replication system in E. coli. Congrats to the Diercks and Schultz lab teams at Scripps Research! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Chang Liu
The Xue lab at UC Irvine is looking for a staff scientist to support our work investigating how microbes interact and evolve in the gut microbiome! Open to a wide range of previous experience levels, see ad for more.
recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09601
recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09601
Junior, Assistant, or Associate Specialist – Xue Lab
University of California, Irvine is hiring. Apply now!
recruit.ap.uci.edu
July 17, 2025 at 8:32 PM
The Xue lab at UC Irvine is looking for a staff scientist to support our work investigating how microbes interact and evolve in the gut microbiome! Open to a wide range of previous experience levels, see ad for more.
recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09601
recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09601
Happy to share this work, led by Olek Pisera, on dialing in a wide range of copy numbers for the orthogonal plasmid of OrthoRep. We used this ability to study how plasmid copy number influences evolutionary outcomes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The role of plasmid copy number and mutation rate in evolutionary outcomes - Nature Ecology & Evolution
In an experimental multicopy plasmid evolution system that allows manipulation of mutation rate and copy number, low copy number promoted enrichment of beneficial alleles whereas high copy number main...
www.nature.com
July 15, 2025 at 8:47 PM
Happy to share this work, led by Olek Pisera, on dialing in a wide range of copy numbers for the orthogonal plasmid of OrthoRep. We used this ability to study how plasmid copy number influences evolutionary outcomes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Happy to share the peer-reviewed and updated version of our work on OrthoRep-driven evolution of aaRSs for genetic code expansion with unnatural amino acids. Congrats to Yuichi Furuhata, a true master bioengineer, on leading this excellent work! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Directed evolution of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases through in vivo hypermutation - Nature Communications
Genetic code expansion (GCE) enables the incorporation of new amino acids into proteins. Here, authors demonstrate the rapid OrthoRep-driven evolution of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases for GCE, increasing...
www.nature.com
May 24, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Happy to share the peer-reviewed and updated version of our work on OrthoRep-driven evolution of aaRSs for genetic code expansion with unnatural amino acids. Congrats to Yuichi Furuhata, a true master bioengineer, on leading this excellent work! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We’re excited to share new work on the continuous in vivo evolution of gene libraries towards arbitrary functions. Led by superstar Olek Pisera, our experiments show that gene evolution is highly versatile...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Rapid continuous evolution of gene libraries towards arbitrary functions
The emergence and evolution of new gene functions is central to biology, yet experimental tools that allow us to prospectively probe and understand this process are lacking. While systems for continuo...
www.biorxiv.org
May 6, 2025 at 6:23 PM
We’re excited to share new work on the continuous in vivo evolution of gene libraries towards arbitrary functions. Led by superstar Olek Pisera, our experiments show that gene evolution is highly versatile...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Chang Liu
#SyntheticBiology postdoctoral position in our group in University of Florida's Horticultural Sciences department. Work is directed evolution to improve enzymes that underlie important crop traits ⬇️
April 16, 2025 at 7:44 PM
#SyntheticBiology postdoctoral position in our group in University of Florida's Horticultural Sciences department. Work is directed evolution to improve enzymes that underlie important crop traits ⬇️
Reposted by Chang Liu
My story: I’m a single father and cancer researcher whose wife died of a rare cancer. Science and biomedical research is personal to me. Here is my op-ed in my hometown newspaper. Pls fwd.
www.vindy.com/opinion/edit...
www.vindy.com/opinion/edit...
DOGE ends America’s golden age of biomedical research
Biomedical research impacts all of us. I became curious about how drugs work after my mom was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when I was a small boy. She received “gold shots” as treatment, which ...
www.vindy.com
March 17, 2025 at 9:29 PM
My story: I’m a single father and cancer researcher whose wife died of a rare cancer. Science and biomedical research is personal to me. Here is my op-ed in my hometown newspaper. Pls fwd.
www.vindy.com/opinion/edit...
www.vindy.com/opinion/edit...
Reposted by Chang Liu
We have to stand up for science! Anyone who can join these rallies and believes that US science must be protected should come! @standupforscience.bsky.social
February 15, 2025 at 7:51 PM
We have to stand up for science! Anyone who can join these rallies and believes that US science must be protected should come! @standupforscience.bsky.social
Reposted by Chang Liu
Another assault on US competitiveness at a time when biomedicine is roaring with innovation, an own-goal in a high-stakes international tournament. Of course the real losers are American people needing medicines and cures.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately
The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease.
www.washingtonpost.com
February 8, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Another assault on US competitiveness at a time when biomedicine is roaring with innovation, an own-goal in a high-stakes international tournament. Of course the real losers are American people needing medicines and cures.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
Integrase-assisted transformation allows OrthoRep-driven evolution to start from very big libraries. Efficiency is even higher than the transformation of normal nuclear plasmids into yeast, because OrthoRep is cytosolic. Great job Olek, Yutong and team! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Ultra-Efficient Integration of Gene Libraries onto Yeast Cytosolic Plasmids
Efficient methods for diversifying genes of interest (GOIs) are essential in protein engineering. For example, OrthoRep, a yeast-based orthogonal DNA replication system that achieves the rapid in vivo...
www.biorxiv.org
December 1, 2024 at 3:36 PM
Integrase-assisted transformation allows OrthoRep-driven evolution to start from very big libraries. Efficiency is even higher than the transformation of normal nuclear plasmids into yeast, because OrthoRep is cytosolic. Great job Olek, Yutong and team! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We have new postdoc positions available. Please apply if you are interested in protein engineering, continuous evolution, OrthoRep, and/or synthetic biology! recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09324. Some particular problems we have a unique angle of attack on include…
Postdoctoral Scholar – Protein Evolution and Synthetic Biology
University of California, Irvine is hiring. Apply now!
recruit.ap.uci.edu
November 21, 2024 at 9:44 PM
We have new postdoc positions available. Please apply if you are interested in protein engineering, continuous evolution, OrthoRep, and/or synthetic biology! recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09324. Some particular problems we have a unique angle of attack on include…
We're starting a new Institute for Engineering + Health at UCI to focus on Rapid Antibody Engineering and Evolution! engineering.uci.edu/news/2024/11...
Engineering+ Health Institute Announced | Samueli School of Engineering at UC Irvine
engineering.uci.edu
November 19, 2024 at 9:30 PM
We're starting a new Institute for Engineering + Health at UCI to focus on Rapid Antibody Engineering and Evolution! engineering.uci.edu/news/2024/11...
Our work describing molecular recording of sequential information by directing a chain of insertions with prime editor in mammalian cells is now out here - nature.com/articles/s41.... Congratulations to @theresaloveless.bsky.social, Courtney Carlson, and the whole team!
Open-ended molecular recording of sequential cellular events into DNA - Nature Chemical Biology
Loveless, Carlson and colleagues describe peCHYRON, a DNA recorder that propagates an unending chain of insertions. Each link contains a randomizable 3-bp ‘signature’ sequence that serves to record a ...
nature.com
November 19, 2024 at 9:27 PM
Our work describing molecular recording of sequential information by directing a chain of insertions with prime editor in mammalian cells is now out here - nature.com/articles/s41.... Congratulations to @theresaloveless.bsky.social, Courtney Carlson, and the whole team!
Our work describing extensive gene divergence on laboratory timescales with upgraded OrthoRep systems is now out here - science.org/doi/10.1126/.... Congratulations to Gordon Rix and team!
Continuous evolution of user-defined genes at 1 million times the genomic mutation rate
When nature evolves a gene over eons at scale, it produces a diversity of homologous sequences with patterns of conservation and change that contain rich structural, functional, and historical informa...
science.org
November 19, 2024 at 9:26 PM
Our work describing extensive gene divergence on laboratory timescales with upgraded OrthoRep systems is now out here - science.org/doi/10.1126/.... Congratulations to Gordon Rix and team!