LIU, Junyan
Lecturer
Doctor of Philosophy (University of Cambridge)
Bachelor of Science (The University of Hong Kong)
Dr. LIU Junyan graduated from The University of Hong Kong with biology major in 2013. She obtained her doctoral degree from the Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge in 2017, studying indole signalling and stress response in Escherichia coli. She received her postdoctoral training from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, researching on mobile genetic elements that disperse antibiotic resistance in the human gut microbiome. Dr. LIU has worked in two biotech startups in London and Shenzhen respectively before joining the School of MEDICINE, CUHK-Shenzhen in November, 2024. Her research interests lie in (but not limited to) all four major divisions of microbiome: human, animal, plant and environment, host-microbiota interaction, bacterial stress response, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), mobile genetic elements (MGEs) and she is keen on doing research using both dry lab and wet lab approaches.
Forster, S.C.*, Liu, J.*, Kumar, N. et al. Strain-level characterization of broad host range mobile genetic elements transferring antibiotic resistance from the human microbiome. Nat Commun 13, 1445 (2022).
Liu, J., & Summers, D.. Indole at low concentration helps exponentially growing Escherichia coli survive at high temperature. PloS one, 12(12), e0188853 (2017).
Zarkan, A., Liu, J., Matuszewska, M., Gaimster, H., & Summers, D. K. Local and Universal Action: The Paradoxes of Indole Signalling in Bacteria. Trends in microbiology, 28(7), 566–577 (2020).
Zarkan, A., Matuszewska, M., Trigg, S. B., Zhang, M., Belgami, D., Croft, C., Liu, J., El-Ouisi, S., Greenhalgh, J., Duboff, J. S., Rahman, T., & Summers, D. K. Inhibition of indole production increases the activity of quinolone antibiotics against E. coli persisters. Scientific reports, 10(1), 11742 (2020).
De Leon-Rodriguez, A., Caño-Muñiz, S. L., Liu, J., & Summers, D. K. Indole modifies the central carbon flux in the anaerobic metabolism of Escherichia coli: application to the production of hydrogen and other metabolites. New biotechnology, 33(6), 868–873 (2016).
Shan, Y., Pan, Q., Liu, J., Huang, F., Sun, H., Nishino, K., & Yan, A. Covalently linking the Escherichia coli global anaerobic regulator FNR in tandem allows it to function as an oxygen stable dimer. Biochemical and biophysical research communications, 419(1), 43–48 (2012).