Before joining the School of Public Health, Dr Che You was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S., starting in 2021, where his research focused on skin microbiome. Later in 2024, he was honoured with the Annual NIAMS IPR Fellow’s Research Award. He completed his PhD in environmental microbiology at the University of Hong Kong, focusing on the environmental dimension of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and pathogens, and was recognised as an Outstanding Research Postgraduate Student in 2020. During his PhD, he also served as a visiting scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he focused on antimicrobial resistance and pathogen transmission epidemiology.

Dr Che’s lab focuses on studying the complex interplay between human microbiome, AMR, and pathogens. Using state-of-the-art approaches such as Nanopore-based next-generation sequencing, single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, advanced bioinformatics, and molecular tools, the lab investigates multi-kingdom diversity, adaptation, and evolution of skin/gut microbiome in both health and disease.

The lab also aims to uncover resistome and associated mobile genetic elements (MGEs) through big data analysis, while experimentally dissecting the mechanisms driving AMR dissemination among pathogens. Ultimately, Dr Che’s team aims to develop innovative strategies, such as bacteriophage therapies, to combat global AMR challenge.

To view more about the work of Dr Che’s lab, please visit: https://www.hkupasteur.hku.hk/che-lab. 

1. Che, Y., Yang, Y., Xu, XQ., Břinda, K., Hanage, WP., Polz, MF., Hanage, WP., Zhang, T. Conjugative plasmids cooperate with insertion sequences to shape the horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes. PNAS. 118, e2008731118 (2021, highly cited paper).
   
2. Che, Y., Xia, Y., Liu, L., Li, AD., Yang, Yu., Zhang, T. Mobile antibiotic resistome in wastewater treatment plants revealed by Nanopore metagenomic sequencing. Microbiome. 7(1), 44 (2019, highly cited paper).
   
3. Che, Y., Xu, XQ., Yang, Y., Břinda, K., Hanage, WP., Yang, C. Zhang, T. High-resolution genomic surveillance elucidates a multilayered hierarchical transfer of resistance between WWTP- and human/animal-associated bacteria. Microbiome. 10(1), 16 (2022).
   
4. Huo, K., Liu, Y., Huang, R., Zhang, Y., Liu, H., Che, Y., Yang, C. Development of a novel promoter engineering‐based strategy for creating an efficient para‐nitrophenol‐mineralizing bacterium. Journal of Hazardous Materials. 424, 127672 (2022, corresponding author).
   
5. Che, Y., Han, JM., Harkins, C., Conlan, S., Deming, C., Amirkhani, A., Bingham, MA., Holmes, C., Englander, H., Shen, ZY., NISC, Castelo-Soccio, L., Pittaluga, S., Zhao, C., Dell’Orso, S., Pai, SY., Hickstein, D., Holland, SM., Brownell, I., Nagao, K., Gonzalez, CE., Shah, NN., Freeman, AF.,  Su, HC., Segre, JA., Kong, HH. Restoration of the human skin microbiome following immune recovery after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. (2024, submitted)
   
6. Shen, ZY., Robert, L., Stolpman, M., Che, Y., Walsh, A., Saffery, R., Allen, KJ., Eckert, J., Young, A., Deming, K., Chen, Q., Conlan, S., Laky, K., Li, JM., Chatman, L., Kashaf, SS., NISC., Kong, HH., Frischmeyer-Guerrerio, PA., Perrett, KP., Segre, JA. A genome catalog of the early‐life human skin microbiome. Genome Biol. 24(1), 252. (2023).
   
7. Yang, Y., Che, Y., Liu, L., Wang, CX., Yin, XL., Deng, Y., Yang, C., Zhang, T. Rapid absolute quantification of pathogens and ARGs by nanopore sequencing. Sci Total Environ. 809, 152190 (2022).
   
8. Deng, Y., Huang, Y., Che, Y., Yang, Y., Yin, XL., Yan, AX., Dai, L., Liu, YY., Polz, MF., Zhang, T. Microbiome assembly for sulfonamide subsistence and the transfer of genetic determinants. ISME J. 15(10):2817‐2829 (2021).
   
9. Liu, L., Wang, YL., Che, Y., Chen, YQ., Xia, Y., Luo, RB., Cheng, SH., Zheng, CM., Zhang, T. High‐quality bacterial genomes of a partial‐nitritation/anammox system by an iterative hybrid assembly method. Microbiome. 8(1), 155 (2020).