CHEN Lab Research & Initiatives
Welcome to CHEN Lab! By harnessing the natural predatory abilities of bacteriophages and implementing antimicrobial materials, we aim to provide sustainable methods for controlling harmful bacterial populations in food products. Through these efforts, we strive to advance food safety science and contribute to a safer, more sustainable food system.
One of our primary approaches involves leveraging bacteriophages to advance food safety. We develop phage-based solutions to control pathogens in food systems, dissect the molecular mechanisms and evolutionary dynamics of host–phage interactions, and uncover how pathogens acquire phage resistance to guide the design of more robust and sustainable interventions.
Another research direction focuses on enhancing the functionality, nutritional value, and safety of alternative proteins. We extract and characterize functional proteins from novel sources, and evaluate their anti-nutritional factors and safety both before and after digestion.
We also leverage large, data-rich approaches, including multi-omics datasets, with artificial intelligence (AI), to systematically uncover microbial spoilage pathways. These insights enable us to develop predictive models that anticipate quality deterioration and safety risks.