Our laboratory focuses primarily on the study of microbial protein toxins. These toxins serve as crucial “weapons” used by bacteria to attack their hosts. While toxins targeting humans are well known in medical research, a vast number of microbial protein toxins targeting insects also exist in nature and play equally important roles in ecosystems.

With recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence for protein structure prediction and the continuous development of various genetic tools, we now have unprecedented opportunities to explore these insect-targeting toxins, which have evolved over millions of years. Our laboratory will concentrate on three main areas: the mechanisms of interaction between microbial protein toxins and their hosts, the engineering and utilization of microbial protein toxins, and the discovery of novel toxins.