| Website | Home URL |
| Division | Biochemistry |
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| Specialties |
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| ireneachen@ucla.edu | |
| Office | Boelter Hall 4531K |
| Lab | Boelter Hall 7523 |
| Office Lab | (310) 206-9172 |
Biography
Irene A. Chen is a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously, she was an assistant and then associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received a B.A. in chemistry and an M.D.-Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard, advised by Jack Szostak, and was a Bauer Fellow in systems biology at Harvard. She has received the Searle Scholar award, NIH New Innovator award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award, and the David White award for outstanding contribution in astrobiology. She has been a Simons Investigator for the Collaboration on the Origin of Life since 2013.
Research Interests
The Chen Lab studies life-like biochemical systems to understand their fundamental properties and address emerging challenges in biotechnology and infectious disease. Our focus is biomolecular design and evolution in two nanoscale systems: simple synthetic cells and bacteriophages (phages).
Honors & Awards
- Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, 2018
- Regents Junior Faculty Fellowship, 2017
- NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, 2016
- Hellman Family Faculty Fellowship, 2015
- Searle Scholar Award, 2014
- Investigator of the Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life, 2013-2023
- David White Research Award from the International Society for the Study of
the Origin of Life (given triennially), 2011 - G.E. and Science Prize for Young Life Scientists, 2006
- Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award, 2005
- Barry M. Goldwater Scholar, 1998
- Westinghouse Science Talent Search, 1st place, 1995
Representative Publications
Most Recent Publications (for a full list, please visit here)
- D Bagchi*, A Adhikari*, K McCarthy, D Kang, Y Chen, IA Chen. (2025) Silver nanoparticles templated by M13 phage exhibit high antibacterial activity against gram-negative pathogens and reduced rate of bacterial resistance in vitro. Langmuir 41:48, 32270–32284. DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.5c03695
- Y Yang, D Kang, B Mihalache, S Vexler, S Jain, H Peng, N Annabi, S Yang, IA Chen. (2025) Metagenome-inspired libraries to engineer phage M13 for targeted killing of gram-negative bacterial species. Nucleic Acids Res., 58:13, gkaf984. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkaf984
- Y Yang, S Vexler, MC Jordan, S Abbondante, D Kang, H Peng, M Marshall, BV Naini, S Jain, Y-C Lai, N Annabi, KP Roos, E Pearlman, IA Chen. (2025) A synthetic phage-peptide conjugate as a potent antibacterial agent for Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections. ACS Cent. Sci. 11:9, 1715–1735. DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.5c00562
- P Salas-Ambrosio, S Vexler, RP Sivasankaran, N Vlahakis, RS Lai, C Johnson, SI Baas-Maynard, DS Min, H Lower, AG Doyle, Y Tang, JA Rodriguez, IA Chen*, J Read de Alaniz*, HD Maynard*. (2025) Biosourced functional hydroxybenzoate-co-lactide polymers with antimicrobial activity. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 147(22) 19230–19238. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5c04624
- Peng H*, Vexler S, Xu S, Chen IA*. (2025) Real-time in vivo bacterial imaging by CT and fluorescence using phage-gold nanorod bioconjugates as contrast agents. ACS Biomater. Sci. Engr. 11:3297-3306, DOI:10.1021/acsbiomaterials.4c02190.
- Blanco C*, Tee A, Sharma P, Newton MS, Lee K-H, Erickson SE, Seelig B, Chen IA. (2025) EasyDIVER+: an advanced tool for analyzing high throughput sequencing data from in vitro evolution of nucleic acids or amino acids. J. Mol. Evol. 93(2):229-237. doi: 10.1007/s00239-025-10244-w
- Adhikari A, Chen IA. (2025) Antibody-nanoparticle conjugates in therapy: combining the best of two worlds. Small, 21(15):2409635.
- Zhang S, Shen Y, Chen IA, Lee J. (2025) Sparse Bayesian group factor model for feature interactions in multiple count tables data. J. Am. Stat. Assoc., 120(550), 723–736. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.2025.2449721
- Peng H*, Chen IA*, Qimron U*. (2025) Engineering phages to fight multidrug-resistant bacteria. Chem. Rev. 125(2):933-971.
- Seelig B* and Chen IA*. (2025) Intellectual frameworks to understand complex biochemical systems at the origin of life. Nat. Chem. 17:11-19.
- Adamala KP, Agashe D, Belkaid Y, Bittencourt DMC, Cai Y, Chang MW, Chen IA, Church GM, Cooper VS, Davis MM, Devaraj NK, Endy D, Esvelt KM, Glass JI, Hand TW, Inglesby TV, Isaacs FJ, James WG, Jones JDG, Kay MS, Lenski RE, Liu C, Medzhitov R, Nicotra ML, Oehm SB, Pannu J, Relman DA, Schwille P, Smith JA, Suga H, Szostak JW, Talbot NJ, Tiedje JM, Venter JC, Winter G, Zhang W, Zhu X, Zuber MT. (2024) Confronting risks of mirror life. Science 386(6728):1351-1353, DOI: 10.1126/science.ads9158
- Cho CJ, An T, Lai Y-C, Vázquez-Salazar A, Fracassi A, Chen IA, Devaraj NK. (2024) Protocells by spontaneous reaction of cysteine with short chain thioesters. Nat. Chem. 17:148–155; doi: 10.1038/s41557-024-01666-y.
- Kenchel J*, Vázquez-Salazar A*, Wells R, Brunton K, Janzen E, Schultz KM, Liu Z, Li W, Parker ET, Dworkin JP, Chen IA. (2024) Prebiotic chiral transfer from self-aminoacylating ribozymes may favor either handedness. Nat. Commun. 15:7980, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52362-x.
- Saha R, Choi J, Chen IA. (2024) Protocell effects on RNA folding, function, and evolution. Acc. Chem. Res. 57(15):2058-2066, DOI: 10.1021/acs.accounts.4c00174
- Saha R and Chen IA. (2024) Synthetic chemistry recreates transitional forms in prebiotic membrane evolution. Chem 10(6):1631-1633, DOI: 10.1016/j.chempr.2024.05.017
- Chen IA. (2024) RNA life on the edge of catastrophe. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA , 121(13):e2402649121.
- Yang Y and Chen IA. (2024) Visualization of engineered M13 phages bound to bacterial targets by transmission electron microscopy. Methods Mol. Biol., 2793:175-183.
- Peng H and Chen IA. (2024) Preparation of bioconjugates of chimeric M13 phage and gold nanorods. Methods Mol. Biol., 2793:131-141.
- Saha R*, Vázquez-Salazar A*, Nandy A#, Chen IA#. (2024) Fitness landscapes and evolution of catalytic RNA. Ann. Rev. Biophys., 53:109-125.
- Kang D, Bagchi D, Chen IA. (2023) Pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of phages and their current applications in antimicrobial therapy. Advanced Therapeutics 2023, 2300355. DOI: 10.1002/adtp.202300355
- Saha R, Kao W-L, Malady B, Heng X, Chen IA. (2023) Effect of montmorillonite K10 clay on RNA structure and function. Biophys. J., 122:1-13.
- Charest N, Shen Y, Lai Y-C, Chen IA#, Shea J-E#. (2023) Discovering pathways through ribozyme fitness landscapes using information theoretic quantification of epistasis. RNA, 29(11):1644-1657. doi: 10.1261/rna.079541.122.
- Zhang S, Shen Y, Chen IA, Lee J. (2023) Bayesian modeling of interaction between features in sparse multivariate count data with application to microbiome study. Ann. Appl. Stat. 17(3): 1861-1883. DOI: 10.1214/22-AOAS1690.
- Borg RE*, Ozbakir HF*, Xu B*, Li E, Fang X, Peng H, Chen IA#, Mukherjee A#. (2023) Genetically engineered filamentous phage for bacterial detection using magnetic resonance imaging. Sens. Diagn., 2:948-955. DOI: 10.1039/D3SD00026E
- Salas-Ambrosio P, Vexler S, Pallathery Sivasankaran R, Chen IA, Maynard H. (2023) Caffeine and cationic copolymers with antimicrobial properties. ACS Bio & Med Chem Au, 3(2):189-200.
Most Significant Publications
- Peng H, Borg RE, Dow LP, Pruitt BL, Chen IA. Controlled phage therapy by photothermal ablation of specific bacterial species using gold nanorods targeted by chimeric phages.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci USA, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1913234117. [pdf] - Verbanic S, Shen Y,
Lee J, Deacon JM, Chen IA. Microbial predictors of healing and short-term effect of debridement on the microbiome of chronic wounds: the role of facultative anaerobes.
npj Biofilms Microbiomes, 6:21. - Janzen E, Blanco C, Peng H, Kenchel J, Chen IA. Promiscuous ribozymes and their proposed role in prebiotic evolution.
Chem. Rev. [pdf] - Pressman A, Liu Z, Janzen E, Blanco C, Muller UF, Joyce GF, Pascal R, Chen IA. Mapping a systematic ribozyme fitness landscape reveals a frustrated evolutionary network for self-aminoacylating RNA.
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 141(15), 6213-6223. - Peng H and Chen IA. Rapid colorimetric detection of bacterial species through capture of gold nanoparticles by chimeric phages. ACS Nano, 13 (2), 1244–1252
- Saha R, Verbanic S, Chen IA. Lipid vesicles chaperone an encapsulated RNA aptamer.
Nat. Commun. 9:2313 - Pressman A, Moretti JE, Campbell GW, Muller UF*, Chen IA*. Analysis of in vitro evolution reveals the underlying distribution of catalytic activity among random sequences.
Nucleic Acids Res. 45: 8167-8179. “Breakthrough” article. [pdf]
[data on SRA] - Jimenez JI,Xulvi-Brunet R, Campbell G, Turk-MacLeod R, Chen IA. Comprehensive experimental fitness landscape and evolutionary network for small
RNA. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 2013 110(37):14984-9.
[Data on Dryad: doi:10.5061/dryad.3rq8q88]
[pdf] - Leu K, Kervio E,Obermayer B, Turk-MacLeod R, Yuan C, Luevano J-M, Chen E, Gerland U, Richert C, Chen IA. Cascade of reduced speed and accuracy after errors in enzyme-free copying of nucleic acid sequences. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013. 135(1):354-366. [pdf]