Huadong Peng specialises in Yeast Engineering and Synthetic Biology (YESBio), focusing on sustainable biomanufacturing for the agri-food sector, human health, and industrial biotechnology.
Dr. Huadong Peng is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), University of Queensland from Jan 2024. He is also a Future Academic Leader with Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator (FaBA), and a group leader at UQ's Biosustainability Hub. He earned his PhD from Monash University in 2018, followed by postdoctoral training at Imperial College London and the Technical University of Denmark until 2023. Prior to his PhD, he received his Master Degree from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013 and a Bachelor Degree from China Three Gorges University in 2010. Additionally, he worked as a research associate at Novozymes China from November 2013 to January 2015.
Currently, Dr Peng leads the Yeast Engineering and Synthetic Biology (YESBio) research group, focusing on sustainable biomanufacturing through synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. He works closely with Prof. Esteban Marcellin. His expertise includes developing innovative synthetic biology tools (gene assembly, CRISPR genome editing and biosensor), advanced microbial cell factories, and synthetic microbial communities, as well as optimizing metabolic pathways to improve the production of high-value compounds for use in food ingredients, biochemicals, biofuels, and biomedicines.
Dr Peng has secured A$610K in funding, including grants, awards and scholarships. Dr. Peng has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers in prestigious journals like Nature Microbiology, Nature Chemical Biology, PNAS, etc., H-index 15 (google scholar Sep 2024). He received the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad and has delivered invited presentations at major international conferences.
Dr. Peng is also an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology (CoESB) and actively contributes to the scientific community through editorial roles such as The Innovation, BioDesign Research and mLife.
Dr Peng is looking for highly motivated Honours, Master and Ph.D. students, and highly competitive full scholarship may be provided. The University of Queensland ranks in the top 50 as measured by the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities. The University also ranks 45 in the QS World University Rankings, 52 in the US News Best Global Universities Rankings, 60 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and 55 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities.
Industry
I am interested in developing industrial collaborations by commercializing advanced microbial cell factories, communities and enabling synthetic biology tools and technologies established in my lab. We can provide sustainable bio-solutions for the industrial sectors including agri-food, human health and industrial biotechnology.
Funding
I have secured over A$610K in funding, including
2024 UQ Biosustainability hub seed funding, A$ 50K
2024 Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator seed funding, A$160K
2023 Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad, A$ 15K
2021 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship (A$266K, 8% success rate)
2018 Young Investigator Poster Runner-up award in the ME12 conference (AIChE & IMES, A$370, 13 awards/ 500 attendees); ME12 Junior researcher grant by International Metabolic Engineering Society, A$ 1.2K
2015 Monash Graduate Scholarship (MGS), Monash International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (MIPRS)
2013 Excellent Director Research Award of Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS, A$1K, 2/50)
Key Publications
(#, co-first author; *, corresponding author)
Peng, H.; Darlington, A. P. S.; South, E. J.; Chen, H.-H.; Jiang, W.; Ledesma-Amaro, R. A molecular toolkit of cross-feeding strains for engineering synthetic yeast communities. Nature Microbiology 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41564-023-01596-4.
Peng, H.*; Chen, R.; Shaw, W. M.; Hapeta, P.; Jiang, W.; Bell, D. J.; Ellis, T.; Ledesma-Amaro, R. Modular Metabolic Engineering and Synthetic Coculture Strategies for the Production of Aromatic Compounds in Yeast. ACS Synth Biol 2023, 12 (6), 1739-1749. DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.3c00047
Peng, H.; He, L.; Haritos, V. S. Flow-cytometry-based physiological characterisation and transcriptome analyses reveal a mechanism for reduced cell viability in yeast engineered for increased lipid content. Biotechnology for Biofuels 2019, 12 (1), 98, DOI: 10.1186/s13068-019-1435-6.
Peng H, He L, Haritos VS*: Enhanced production of high-value cyclopropane fatty acid in yeast engineered for increased lipid synthesis and accumulation. Biotechnol. J 2019, 14(4):e1800487. doi:10.1002/biot.201800487
Peng, H.; Chen, H.; Qu, Y.; Li, H.; Xu, J. Bioconversion of different sizes of microcrystalline cellulose pretreated by microwave irradiation with/without NaOH. Appl Energ 2014, 117 (0), 142-148.
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