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Owen Ouyang

Graduate Student (PI: Dr. Nicholas Wu)

Research Interests

Antibody, Biotechnology, High-throughput screening platforms

Research Description

Antibody is one of the most effective protection measures against infectious diseases, and they are the basis of many anti-viral strategies, including vaccination. However, our understanding in antibodies has been extremely limited, due to the existing bottlenecks in the current antibody discovery pipeline. Compared to the entire antibody repertoire of an individual, only less than 1 billionth of antibodies have ever been identified throughout history, and even fewer have been characterized.

At Wu Lab, my area of research is to explore and develop strategies that can accelerate antibody discovery and characterization to further our understanding in antibody immunity.

Education

  • B.A. (Biology), Washington University in St. Louis (2021)

Awards and Honors

Fellowships:

  • Gregorio Weber Graduate Student Fellow in Biochemistry (2024)
  • William T. and Lynn Jackson Graduate Student Fellow in Biochemistry (2022)

Teaching:

  • Robert L. Switzer Award for Excellence in Teaching (2024)

Conferences:

  • IGB Fellows Symposium Poster Presentation Award (2024)
  • School of MCB Research Retreat Poster Presentation Award (2024)
  • Department of Biochemistry Travel Award (2023)

Courses Taught

  • BIOP401: Introduction to Biophysics (Fall 2023)

Additional Campus Affiliations

  • Student Coordinator, Plasmidsaurus
  • Graduate Student Advisor, ASBMB UIUC Student Chapter
  • eLife Community Ambassador

Highlighted Publications

  1. Ouyang WO*, Tan TJC*, Lei R, Song G, Kieffer C, Andrabi R, Matreyek KA, Wu NCProbing the biophysical constraints of SARS-CoV-2 spike N-terminal domain using deep mutational scanning. Science Advances 8:eadd7221 (2022)
  2. Lei R*, Liang W*, Ouyang WO*, Hernandez Garcia A*, Kikuchi C, Wang S, McBride R, Tan TJC, Sun Y, Chen C, Graham CS, Rodriguez LA, Shen IR, Choi D, Bruzzone R, Paulson JC, Nair SK, Mok CKP#Wu NC#Epistasis mediates the evolution of the receptor binding mode in recent human H3N2 hemagglutinin. Nature Communications 15:5175 (2024)
  3. Ouyang WO, Lv H, Liu W, Mou Z, Lei R, Pholcharee T, Wang Y, Dailey KE, Gopal AB, Choi D, Ardagh MR, Talmage L, Rodriguez LA, Dai X, Wu NCRapid synthesis and screening of natively paired antibodies against influenza hemagglutinin stem via oPool+ display. bioRxiv DOI: 10.1101/2024.08.30.610421

      *: equal contribution