Hao (Tony) Wu
Visiting researcher
PhD
I used to study how bacteria successively colonized the terrestrial environment via genomic variations during my PhD and later fascinated by how those tiny bugs, after land colonization, established extensive interactions with different hosts including us humans.
My research is focused on the roles that our gut microbes play in different cardiometabolic diseases such as NAFLD, T2D, and heart failure, and how the underlying human-microbiota interactions might affect the associated therapeutic options. For example, we have previously reported that metformin-adapted microbial shifts could help boost the glucose-lowering effect of this drug (2017, Nature Medicine) and the rapid improvement of liver lipid metabolism in humans is partly associated with microbially derived folate upon low-carbs, high-protein, and high-fat diet intervention (2018, Cell Metabolism). Besides, I am interested in the evolutionary, phylogenetic, and pan-genomic analyses of representative gut microbes.