When
Monday, February 2, 2026, 12:00 p.m.
Jeong-Yeol Yoon
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
The University of Arizona
"Dip and Taste Microbiome Samples and Environmental Toxicants to Detect, Classify and Understand Their Molecular Interactions with Human Proteins and Cells"
Location: Keating 103 | Zoom link
Hosts: Swarna Ganesh and Kellen Chen
Abstract: Our recent research focuses on detecting complex, highly variable targets that cannot be detected with traditional bioreceptors, such as antibodies or nucleic acids. The first targets are microbiome samples, including soil, skin and gut samples, which are currently characterized by nucleic acid sequencing methods. The second targets are environmental toxicants, including PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and nanoplastics, which are currently analyzed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), electron microscopy, or Raman spectrometry. These complex samples interact with proteins in human plasma and epithelial/endothelial cells in human organs, serving as indicators of disease or as drivers of its development. Unfortunately, little research has been conducted on the interactions of microbiota, PFAS and nanoplastics with plasma proteins and epithelial/endothelial cells.
Our lab has recently demonstrated the use of a set of biologically interacting molecules to measure their molecular interactions with microbiota, PFAS and nanoplastics on paper microfluidic chips. A smartphone measures capillary flow velocities, which reflect the extent of various molecular interactions. A cloud-based machine learning model has been developed and optimized to identify and classify different types of microbiota, PFAS and nanoplastics. Machine learning will also reveal the strengths of various molecules’ binding to microbiota, PFAS and nanoplastics, shedding light on their impacts on human cells, their physiology and potentially their disease-development mechanisms. We also plan to design and fabricate organ chip devices, including kidney, liver and blood-brain barrier (BBB) chips, to understand molecular interactions among microbiota, PFAS, nanoplastics and human cells.
Bio: Jeong-Yeol Yoon received his PhD in biomedical engineering from UCLA, working on lab-on-a-chip and biomaterials, and joined the University of Arizona faculty right after graduation. He is currently a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, with a split appointment in the Department of Biosystems Engineering. He was the president of the Institute of Biological Engineering (IBE). He currently serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biological Engineering (Springer Nature), as an associate editor for Biosensors and Bioelectronics (Elsevier), and as an editorial board member for several journals.