Jing-Ke Weng, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Biology – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Chemicals present in food are detected by the human gastrointestinal tract to modulate metabolism and/or elicit different immune responses
Jing-Ke Weng, Ph.D. is an associate professor of biology at MIT and a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. His research aims to probe the origin and evolution of plant metabolism, as well as how plants exploit discrete small molecules to interact with their surrounding environments.
Dr. Weng also uses plant natural products with specific medicinal properties as chemical probes to query human disorders like metabolic syndromes and protein-misfolding diseases. Weng is particularly interested in elucidating the molecular bases of traditional herbal medicines and developing nature-inspired new medicines to fight various human diseases. Dr. Weng’s work at FASI focuses on elucidating the molecular mechanisms by which certain chemicals present in food are detected by the human gastrointestinal tract to modulate metabolism and/or elicit different immune responses.
Featured Publications
Torrens-Spence MP, Glinkerman CM, Günther J, Weng JK. Imine chemistry in plant metabolism. Curr Opin Plant Biol. 2021 Jan 12;60:101999. PMID: 33450608
Jacobowitz JR, Weng JK. Exploring Uncharted Territories of Plant Specialized Metabolism in the Postgenomic Era. Annu Rev Plant Biol. 2020 Apr 29;71:631-658. doi: 10.1146/annurev-arplant-081519-035634. Epub 2020 Mar 16. PMID: 32176525
Chau Y, Li FS, Levsh O, Weng JK. Exploration of icariin analog structure space reveals key features driving potent inhibition of human phosphodiesterase-5. PLoS One. 2019 Sep 20;14(9):e0222803. PMID: 31539416