Dr. POH Chueh Loo

Research Interest

My Engineering Biology research group @ NUS focuses on Synthetic Biology to address challenges in different areas including healthcare and environment. We apply engineering principles to design and build microbes with useful capabilities for medical and industrial applications and developing foundational platform tools to accelerate the design and engineering of the microbes. This includes synthetic gene circuits design and automation, modelling of biological systems, and computer aided design tools for SynBio. We have been “reprogramming” microbes to tackle metabolic diseases, to fight infectious causing pathogen and to control biofilm formation. Our motivation is to make engineering of biology more efficient and predictive so that we can scale complexity in order to create novel solutions to tackle global challenges.

Research Projects

• Model-driven optimization of cell factories in Bioprocess Engineering (NRF-POC)
• Engineering beneficial microbes to sense and kill V. cholerae (MOE Tier 2)
• Development of synthetic optogenetic gene circuits for SynBio applications

Technopreneurship & Startups

Co-founder of AdvanceSyn Pte Ltd, which develops and provides enabling platform technology (e.g. a synthetic biology design and modeling platform) and enabled products by utilizing Synthetic Biology.

Selected Awards & Honours

1. Tan Chin Tuan Fellowship award 2012
2. Best applications award at international Synthetic Biology conference (SB5.0) 2011
3. Nanyang Excellence in Teaching award 2010
4. International Synthetic Biology iGEM competition 2009 (Gold Medal)
5. International Synthetic Biology iGEM competition 2008 (Silver Medal)

Patent/patent Application

1. Designer Probiotics to sense and eradicate Vibrio cholerae. PCT/SG2015/050428
2. Virtual Cell Model For Engineering Synthetic Gene Circuits. PCT/SG2015/050169
3. Engineering Escherichia coli For Conversion Of Hydroxycinnamic Acids To Value-Added Chemicals. PCT No. PCT/SG2013/000242
4. An Engineered Microbe that can sense and eradicate Pseudomonas Aeruginosa. No. 61/529,417 (Granted: 1 US)
5. Dual-Layer Public-Key Reversible Watermarking with Tamper Localization for Bio-Medical Images. 61/243,621. (Granted: 1 US and 1 Singapore)

Recent Invited Talks

1. April 2016 IET Engineering Biology Conference, UK
2. March 2016 Biosystem Design 2.0, Singapore
3. Jan 2016 International Conference on Biomolecular Engineering (ICBE) AiCHE, Singapore
4. Sept 2015 NUS Synbio conference, Singapore
5. Feb 2015 Biosystem Design 1.0, Singapore
6. Aug 2014 A*Star National Metrology Centre, Singapore
7. Feb 2014 UK- Singapore workshop on Synthetic Biology, Singapore
8. Dec 2013 15th International Conference on Biomedical Engineering ICBME. Singapore
9. Oct 2013 NITHM workshop, Singapore
10. March 2013 Workshop on medical imaging and Signal analysis. Talk: Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Professional Service And Society

• Co-Editor-in-Chief of IET Engineering Biology journal, July 2016 – present
• Co-Chair of International Conference Biomolecular Engineering, AiCHE, Singapore 2018
• Organizing member of IET Engineering Biology Conference, Dec 2016, London UK
• Organizing committee member of international conference in Biological System Design 2.0, March 2016
• Organizing committee member of international conference in Biological System Design 1.0, Feb 2015
• Organizing committee member of SynbioBETA conference, Singapore June 2014
• Reviewer of IEEE 36th Annual International IEEE EMBS Conference, Chicago, Illinois, USA 2014
• Reviewer of IEEE-EMBS International Conferences on Biomedical and Health Informatics 2014 in Valencia, Spain
• Reviewer of IEEE EMBS conference – 35th Annual International IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference Japan 2013
• Reviewer of ACS Synthetic Biology
• Reviewer of IEEE Journal of biomedical and health informatics
• Reviewer of PloS ONE
• Reviewer of Medical Physics
• Reviewer of Nuclei Acid Research

Selected Journal Publications

1. Jayaraman P, Devarajan K, Chua TK, Zhang H, Gunawan E, Poh CL. Blue light-mediated transcriptional activation and repression of gene expression in bacteria. Nucleic Acids Res. (2016) Jun 28.
2. Peck, Y., He, P., Chilla, G.S.V.N., Poh, C.L., Wang, D.-A. A preclinical evaluation of an autologous living hyaline-like cartilaginous graft for articular cartilage repair: A pilot study (2015)
3. Yang, Y., Wu, Y., Hu, Y., Cao, Y., Poh, C.L., Cao, B., Song, H. Engineering Electrode-Attached Microbial Consortia for High-Performance Xylose-Fed Microbial Fuel Cell (2015), 5 (11), pp. 6937-6945.
4. Ling HT Maurice^, and CL Poh. A predictor for predicting Escherichia coli transcriptome and the effects of gene perturbations. 15:140, 2014.
5. Hwang IY, Tan MH, Koh E, Ho CL, Poh CL, and Chang MW Reprogramming microbes to be a pathogen-seeking killer. 2014.
6. N. Saeidi, M Arshath*, MW Chang, CL Poh. Characterization of a quorum sensing device for synthetic biology design: Experimental and modeling validation. 103, 91-99. 2013
7. N Saeidi, CK Wong, T Lo, HX Nguyen, H Ling, SSJ Leong, CL Poh, and MW Chang. Engineering microbes to sense and eradicate Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a human pathogen. 7:521, 2011.
8. B. Sana, E. Johnson, K Sheah, CL Poh, S Lim. Iron-based ferritin nanocore as a contrast agent. vol. 5, no. 3, FA48-52, 2010.