Biography
Quanbing Mou joined the Chemistry faculty at Rice University in 2024 and holds the Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Junior Faculty Chair. He earned his B.E. degree in Polymer Science and Engineering from Sichuan University and then enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His thesis work, supervised by Profs. Deyue Yan, Xinyuan Zhu, and Chuan Zhang, involved research on nucleoside analog-containing precise nanodrugs for cancer therapy. In 2018, he joined Prof. Yi Lu’s laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a postdoctoral researcher. There, he specialized in engineering functional nucleic acid-based biosensors for metal ion detection and developing in-situ biosensors to image metabolites and bioproducts in plants. In 2021, he moved to the University of Texas at Austin with Prof. Yi Lu, where he explored new research areas, including engineering CRISPR/Cas systems for biosensing and biomedical applications, developing a super-resolution imaging technique for metal ion detection in living systems, and creating innovative caging strategies for functional nucleic acid-based biosensing. At Rice University, his group’s research interests span chemical biology, analytical chemistry, and bioengineering, with the aim of understanding nucleic acids in biological systems and promoting their applications in biosensing, as well as in disease detection and treatment.
Research Summary
The Mou Lab is dedicated to developing diverse chemical biology tools to explore RNA biology and enhance RNA-related technologies. We aim to create tools that elucidate the spatial information of biomacromolecules within various biological systems. Additionally, our lab is committed to advancing several areas, such as the development of chemical biology tools for mRNA-based therapies and the engineering of high-fidelity gene editing systems. Our goal is to integrate cutting-edge technologies with our tool development efforts to gain insights into complex biological processes and translate these technologies into applications for biosensing as well as disease detection and treatment.