@HuiminZhaoLab profile picture
Huimin Zhao @HuiminZhaoLab
Joined November 2018
  • Tweets 61
  • Following 37
  • Followers 1,972
Photos and videos
Congrats to the team led by Jingxia for developing a new technology to recover rare-earth elements from low grade ore (nature.com/articles/s41467-0…). Also see news: news.illinois.edu/engineered…

Bio-based oxalic acid production in Issatchenkia orientalis enables sustainable rare earth recovery

Nature Communications - The growing demand for rare earth elements (REEs) underscores the need for sustainable recovery methods and a reliable supply. Here the authors establish a platform using a...

nature.com
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I am glad that our recent work on photobiosynthesis was highlighted by Nature: Light-powered bacteria become living chemical factories nature.com/articles/d41586-0…

Light-powered bacteria become living chemical factories

Nature - Engineered Escherichia coli could open the door to more sustainable routes to new drugs and other chemicals.

nature.com
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Congrats to the team led by Yujie and Maolin for successfully integrating new-to-nature photoenzymes into cellular metabolism, published in @NatureCatalysis (rdcu.be/e0pcM). This work lays the groundwork for ab initio biosynthesis design & programmable biomanufacturing.
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Congrats to Harry, Teresa, Sarang and the rest of the team for developing a new bioprocess for cost-effective production of 3-HP, an industrial platform chemical. nature.com/articles/s41467-0….

High yield production of 3-hydroxypropionic acid using Issatchenkia orientalis

Nature Communications - 3-Hydroxypropionic acid (3HP) is a top Department of Energy value-added chemical and precursor to bioplastics, yet cost-effective microbial bioproduction remains elusive....

nature.com
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Are you a US-based STEM college student seeking a summer research opportunity in AI Chemistry? Join us at NSF-MMLI! Applications will close on February 17, 2026. To know more, go to go.illinois.edu/matrix-uni #summerresearch #AIchemistry #NSFfunded #chemistry #ArtificialInteligence
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As a follow-up to our CLEAN tool, we developed EZSpecificity to predict enzyme substrate specificity from sequence (nature.com/articles/s41586-0…) in collaboration with @diwakarshukla and his team. See news: news.illinois.edu/new-ai-too…

Enzyme specificity prediction using cross-attention graph neural networks

Nature - A cross-attention-empowered SE(3)-equivariant graph neural network architecture named EZSpecificity was developed for predicting enzyme substrate specificity.

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We are very grateful to NSF’s generous support that will enable us to develop a cloud biofoundry and turn it to a national user facility: news.illinois.edu/illinois-c….
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Huimin Zhao retweeted
JCIM & JCTC Journals@JCIM_JCTC
24 Sep 2025
AccFG: Accurate Functional Group Extraction and Molecular Structure Comparison pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs… @xuanlllme @HuiminZhaoLab #JCIM Vol65 Issue16 #ChemicalInformation

AccFG: Accurate Functional Group Extraction and Molecular Structure Comparison

Functional groups are specific molecular patterns that influence a molecule’s chemical and physical properties. Identifying them is crucial for understanding the structure–activity relationships....

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I was very excited that our AI Institute for Molecule Synthesis (MMLI) got renewed for another 5 years. See: NSF announces $100 million investment in National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes awards to secure American leadership in AI nsf.gov/news/nsf-announces-1…

NSF announces $100 million investment in National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes...

The investment will accelerate open innovation, empower an AI-ready workforce and strengthen U.S. global competitiveness...

nsf.gov
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Congrats to the team led by Zhengyi and Maolin for developing a new strategy for the photoenzymatic stereoablative enantioconvergence of γ-chiral oximes (nature.com/articles/s41929-0…). See news release: cabbi.bio/using-light-powere….

Photoenzymatic stereoablative enantioconvergence of γ-chiral oximes via hydrogen atom transfer

Nature Catalysis - Remote C–H bond formation via photoenzymatic hydrogen atom transfer has enabled the precise installation of remote stereocentres but is still in its infancy. Here, the...

nature.com
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Congrats to Nilmani, Steve, Tianhao, Jingxia, Adrianna, and Ocean for developing an AI-powered autonomous protein engineering platform (nature.com/articles/s41467-0…). See news release: news.illinois.edu/self-drivi…).

A generalized platform for artificial intelligence-powered autonomous enzyme engineering

Nature Communications - The authors integrate artificial intelligence with laboratory automation to create a widely applicable autonomous platform for efficient and scalable enzyme engineering.

nature.com
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Exited to learn that my NSF global center proposal was selected for funding (new.nsf.gov/news/nsf-interna…). With this grant, we will be able to collaborate with researchers from other countries to establish standards and metrics for biofoundries and democratize biofoundry.

NSF and international partners to invest $82M in 6 Global Centers in 2024

Today, the U.S. National Science Foundation  and partner agencies in the U.S., Canada, Finland, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and the United Kingdom announced funding awards totaling nearly $82…

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I am very pleased that NSF is now investing in biofoundries after we established the first integrated biofoundry in the world more than 10 years ago (new.nsf.gov/news/nsf-invests…). Also see News from UIUC (news.illinois.edu/view/6367/…).

NSF invests in BioFoundries to drive advances across science and engineering

The U.S. National Science Foundation has made five awards totaling $75 million to support the creation of five biofoundries that will spur innovation, provide tools and technologies to researchers…

nsf.gov
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Engineered enzyme flirts with fluorine cen.acs.org/acs-news/acs-mee… via @cenmag

Engineered enzyme flirts with fluoroalkylation

Light-activated enzyme attaches fluorinated groups to molecules with high selectivity

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Congrats to the team led by Maolin who developed an exciting new-to-nature enzymatic process to selectively incorporate fluorine motifs into functional molecules (cabbi.bio/new-additive-proce…).

New Additive Process Can Make Better — and Greener — High-Value Chemicals - CABBI

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Huimin Zhao retweeted
ACS Synthetic Bio@ACSSynBio
27 Jun 2024
We were delighted to present Prof. Dr. Randall Platt with the ACS Synthetic Biology & AIChE Young Innovator Award 🏅 Congratulations, @randall_platt! 🎉 Here's Prof. Huimin Zhao presenting the award at #SEED:
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It was nice to attend another AI related expo in the same building after attending an expo for all 24 NSF AI institutes last September. Enjoyed talking to staff from various lawmakers’ offices to promote the emerging AI Robotics SynBio area. igb.illinois.edu/article/igb…
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Thanks to the hard work by Daniel, Zhixin, Nilmani and Jingxia, a simple strategy has been developed to create a Cas12a system that outperforms the most widely used Cas9 system. nature.com/articles/s41467-0…. Also see news release: igb.illinois.edu/article/res….

Harnessing noncanonical crRNA for highly efficient genome editing

Nature Communications - The inclusion of base Z has the potential to heighten the binding affinity between complementary nucleic acids. Here, the authors integrated base Z into CRISRP-Cas12a crRNA...

nature.com
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Congrats to Hengqian, Chunshuai, and the team for discovering and characterizing a novel bioactive RiPP-fatty acid hybrid molecule (nature.com/articles/s41557-0…). This work has opened a new avenue for finding novel bioactive RiPPs (igb.illinois.edu/article/res…).

Non-modular fatty acid synthases yield distinct N-terminal acylation in ribosomal peptides

Nature Chemistry - Ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) can have vast structural diversity and biological functions enabled by disparate post-translational...

nature.com
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Huimin Zhao retweeted
ACS Synthetic Bio@ACSSynBio
17 Feb 2024
#WeekendReading from #ACSSyntheticBiology! This Editorial from Hector García Martín, Stanislav Mazurenko, and EiC Huimin Zhao has been downloaded over 2000 times! See it here ➡️ go.acs.org/85P AI for Synthetic Biology Special Issue ➡️ go.acs.org/85Q 🤖🔬⚗️
Virtual Special Issue ACS Synthetic Biology AI for Synthetic Biology Read Now ACS Publications Image of a microchip and circuitry in the shape of a brain

ALT Virtual Special Issue ACS Synthetic Biology AI for Synthetic Biology Read Now ACS Publications Image of a microchip and circuitry in the shape of a brain
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