Yi Lu

About

Yi Lu is a professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His primary research areas include bio-micro and nanotechnology, biomedical imaging, bioMEMS, biomolecular engineering, biomolecular modeling, biophotonics, biotechnology, cell and molecular engineering, chemical biosensors, drug delivery, environmental engineering, MRI, and scaffolding materials. His work focuses on developing micro/nano/molecular technologies in bioengineering, including novel molecular probes for bioimaging and targeted drug delivery agents for pharmaceutical applications. He is involved in advancing bioengineering research with an emphasis on innovative technologies for detecting and treating health issues.

Research topics

• Materials science
• Biology
• Nanotechnology
• Virology
• Genetics
• Computational biology
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Biosensing with DNAzymes

  Chemical Society Reviews · 2021-01-01 · 456 citations

  reviewOpen accessCorresponding

  This article provides a comprehensive review of biosensing with DNAzymes, providing an overview of different sensing applications while highlighting major progress and seminal contributions to the field of portable biosensor devices and point-of-care diagnostics. Specifically, the field of functional nucleic acids is introduced, with a specific focus on DNAzymes. The incorporation of DNAzymes into bioassays is then described, followed by a detailed overview of recent advances in the development…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Precision-Guided Missile-Like DNA Nanostructure Containing Warhead and Guidance Control for Aptamer-Based Targeted Drug Delivery into Cancer Cells in Vitro and in Vivo

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2020-01-02 · 207 citations

  articleCorresponding

  It is crucial to deliver anticancer drugs to target cells with high precision and efficiency. While nanomaterials have been shown to enhance the delivery efficiency once they reach the target, it remains challenging for precise drug delivery to overcome the nonspecific adsorption and off-target effect. To meet this challenge, we report herein the design of a novel DNA nanostructure to act as a DNA nanoscale precision-guided missile (D-PGM) for highly efficient loading and precise delivery of che…

  PublisherDOI

• Self-Protected DNAzyme Walker with a Circular Bulging DNA Shield for Amplified Imaging of miRNAs in Living Cells and Mice

  ACS Nano · 2021-12-02 · 182 citations

  articleCorresponding

  Abnormal expression of miRNAs is often detected in various human cancers. DNAzyme machines combined with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) hold promise for detecting specific miRNAs in living cells but show short circulation time due to the fragility of catalytic core. Using miRNA-21 as the model target, by introducing a circular bulging DNA shield into the middle of the catalytic core, we report herein a self-protected DNAzyme (E) walker capable of fully stepping on the substrate (S)-modified AuNP for…

  PublisherDOI

• Direct detection of human adenovirus or SARS-CoV-2 with ability to inform infectivity using DNA aptamer-nanopore sensors

  Science Advances · 2021 · 161 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  copies/ml for SARS-CoV-2. Applications of the aptamer-nanopore sensors in different types of water samples, saliva, and serum are demonstrated for both enveloped and nonenveloped viruses, making the sensor generally applicable for detecting these and other emerging viruses of environmental and public health concern.

  PublisherDOI

• Flavor dependence of chiral symmetry breaking and the conformal window

  Open MIND · 2026-02-16

  preprint

  We investigate the phase structure of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) in the vacuum as a function of quark flavor number $N_f$ within the chiral limit. By self-consistently solving the coupled DSEs for the quark and gluon propagators in a minimal QCD scheme, we elucidate the nonperturbative dynamics governing dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. Our calculations determine a critical flavor number of $N_f^c=6.81$ which marks the chiral symmetry restoration of quarks. Further analysis reveals the crit…

  DOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01ES016865

  NIH · $1.7M · 2014

• Biosynthetic Models of Heteronuclear Metalloenzymes in Multi-electron Processes

  NIH · $5.1M · 2001–2023

• Design and Selection of Novel Metalloenzymes for Biocatalysis, Bioimaging, and Genetic Engineering

  NIH · $2.8M · 2021–2026

Frequent coauthors

• Edward I. Solomon

  SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

  93 shared

• Juewen Liu

  University of Waterloo

  71 shared

• Britt Hedman

  Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource

  64 shared

• Keith O. Hodgson

  Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource

  64 shared

• Ninian J. Blackburn

  Oregon Health & Science University

  50 shared

• Hang Xing

  State Key Laboratory of Chemobiosensing and Chemometrics

  48 shared

• William B. Tolman

  Washington University in St. Louis

  46 shared

• Yang Yu

  Beijing Institute of Technology

  46 shared

Education

• PhD, Chemistry

  University of California at Los Angeles

  1992

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Shuming Nieh-128
• Stephen Bopparth-98
• Jonathan V. Sweedlerh-93