Graduate Program Affiliations

• Plant Biology Graduate Group

Preceptor

• Yann-Ru Lou

Research

I am interested in studying natural plant products to improve drug delivery. A major cause of low drug delivery is poor solubility. Acylsugars, a plant metabolite produced in the nightshade family, offer a unique solution to solving low drug uptake by favorably altering solubility. As a structurally diverse class of metabolites, acylsugars can be used as a modular, inert additive in existing delivery methods, including topicals and nanobodies. Through the utilization of genomics, biochemistry, and protein engineering, I aim to develop a plant synthetic biology platform that allows for sustainable and scalable acylsugar production with high structural specificity.