Prof. LUO Haiwei

Prof. LUO Haiwei 羅海偉

Associate Professor (Joint Appointment with SLS)

 

Please also find my page at SLS.

 

Rm 102A, Marine Science Laboratory
3943 6121
Prof. LUO Haiwei

Education

2010 Ph.D. Molecular Evolution University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA
2008 M.S. Microbial Ecology University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA
2004 B.S. Environmental Science Xiamen University

Academic Employments

2022 Director, Simon F.S. Li Marine Science Laboratory, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
2021 Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
2015 Investigator, State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
2015-2020 Assistant Professor, School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
2010-2014 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Marine Sciences, University of Georgia

Research Fields and Current Research Interests

  • Next-generation probiotics for marine wildlife conservation and aquaculture safety and productivity
  • Adaptive evolution of genome-reduced marine bacterioplankton
  • New strategies to calibrate molecular clocks of bacterial evolution
  • Ecology and evolution of free-living diazotrophic bacteria in soils and application in green agriculture

Representative Publications

T. Liao, S. Wang, H. Zhang, E.E. Stüeken, and H. Luo. 2024. Dating ammonia-oxidizing bacteria with abundant eukaryotic fossils. Molecular Biology and Evolution (in press)
H. Zhang, F.L. Hellweger, and H. Luo. 2024. Genome reduction occurred in early Prochlorococcus with an unusually low effective population size. The ISME Journal (in press)
Z. Chen, X. Wang, Y. Song, Q. Zeng, Y. Zhang, and H. Luo. 2022. Prochlorococcus have low global mutation rate and small effective population size. Nature Ecology & Evolution 6(2): 183-194
S. Wang and H. Luo. 2021. Dating Alphaproteobacteria evolution with eukaryotic fossils. Nature Communications 12: 3324
H. Luo, Y. Huang, R. Stepanauskas, and J. Tang. 2017. Excess of non-conservative amino acid changes in marine bacterioplankton lineages with reduced genomes. Nature Microbiology 2: 17091

Honours and Awards

2021-2022 CUHK Research Excellence Award
2016-2017 CUHK Young Researcher Award

Professional Activities

Current

2020 Editorial Board member, The ISME Journal
2024-2025 Invited Guest Editor, Molecular Ecology, special issue “Genomics of Speciation”
2023 Associate Editor, Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal

Teaching

Current

BIOL3410 General Microbiology (UG, Fall, 2015+)

BIOL2420 Population Genetics (UG, Spring, 2024+)

LSCI6106 Techniques in Evolutionary Genomic Analysis (PG, Fall, 2020+)

College Affiliation in CUHK

New Asia College 

Books

Editor, Methods in Molecular Biology, Vol. 2569, Environmental Microbial Evolution: Methods and Protocols, 2022, Humana Press

Selected Recent Publications

  • T. Liao, S. Wang, H. Zhang, E.E. Stüeken, and H. Luo. 2024. Dating ammonia-oxidizing bacteria with abundant eukaryotic fossils. Molecular Biology and Evolution (in press)
  • H. Zhang, F.L. Hellweger, and H. Luo. 2024. Genome reduction occurred in early Prochlorococcus with an unusually low effective population size. The ISME Journal (in press)
  • T. Liao, S. Wang, E.E. Stüeken, and H. Luo. 2022. Phylogenomic evidence for the origin of obligately anaerobic Anammox bacteria around the Great Oxidation Event. Molecular Biology and Evolution 39(8): msac170
  • Z. Chen, X. Wang, Y. Song, Q. Zeng, Y. Zhang, and H. Luo. 2022. Prochlorococcus have low global mutation rate and small effective population size. Nature Ecology & Evolution 6(2): 183-194
  • H. Zhang, Y. Sun, Q. Zeng, S.A. Crowe, and H. Luo. 2021. Snowball Earth, population bottleneck and Prochlorococcus evolution. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288(1963): 20211956
  • X. Feng, X. Chu, Y. Qian, M.W. Henson, V.C. Lanclos, F. Qin, S. Barnes, Y. Zhao, J.C. Thrash, and H. Luo. 2021. Mechanisms driving genome reduction of a novel Roseobacter lineage. The ISME Journal 15(12): 3576-3586
  • S. Wang and H. Luo. 2021. Dating Alphaproteobacteria evolution with eukaryotic fossils. Nature Communications 12: 3324
  • D. Luo, X. Wang, X. Feng, M. Tian, S. Wang, S-L. Tang, P. Ang, A. Yan, and H. Luo. 2021. Population differentiation of Rhodobacteraceae along coral compartments. The ISME Journal 15(11): 3286-3302
  • J. Tao, S. Wang, T. Liao, and H. Luo. 2021. Evolutionary origin and ecological implication of a unique nif island in free-living Bradyrhizobium lineages. The ISME Journal 15(11): 3195-3206
  • J. Gu, X. Wang, X. Ma, Y. Sun, X. Xiao, and H. Luo. 2021. Unexpectedly high mutation rate of a deep-sea hyperthermophilic anaerobic archaeon. The ISME Journal 15(6): 1862-1869 
  • X. Chu, S. Li, S. Wang, D. Luo, and H. Luo. 2021. Gene loss through pseudogenization contributes to the ecological diversification of a generalist Roseobacter lineage. The ISME Journal 15 (2): 489-502

Review Articles

  • H. Luo. 2025. How big is big? The effective population size of marine bacteria. Annual Review of Marine Science (in press)
  • C.R. Voolstra, J.B. Raina, M. Dörr, A. Cárdenas, C. Pogoreutz, C.B. Silveira, A.R Mohamed, D.G Bourne, H. Luo, S.A. Amin, R.S. Peixoto. 2024. Coral bacterial microbiome in sickness, in health, and in a changing world. Nature Reviews Microbiology (in press)

Research Grants

  • 01/2024-12/2026. Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) General Research Fund (GRF), “Understanding biological nitrogen cycle evolution through new molecular clock approaches” (14107823), PI, HK$1,374,820
  • 01/2023-12/2024. Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) General Research Fund (GRF), “Timing the bacterial tree of life based on host-bacteria co-evolution” (14116922), PI, HK$1,081,749
  • 01/2023-06/2024. Marine Conservation Enhancement Fund (MCEF), “Population genomics of coral-associated denitrifying bacteria along nitrate gradients in Hong Kong waters” (MCEF21101), PI, HK$790,650
  • 01/2021-12/2023. Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) General Research Fund (GRF), “Reconstructing the evolutionary history of flavobacteria” (14110820), PI, HK$1,131,260
  • 01/2021-12/2022. the Open Collaborative Research Fund (OCRF), Hong Kong Branch of the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory, “A correlated evolutionary history between the deep sea animals and their associated microbial lineages” (HKB_L20200007), PI, HK$700,000
  • 01/2018-12/2020. Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) General Research Fund (GRF), “Roseobacter genome content diversification in a heterogeneous ocean” (14163917), PI, HK$848,714
  • 06/2017-05/2025. Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) Area of Excellence Scheme (AoE), “Center for genomic studies on plant-environment interaction for sustainable agriculture and food security” (AoE/M-403/16), co-PI
  • 06/2017-11/2019. Hong Kong Environment and Conservation Fund (ECF), “Genomic analysis of coral associated bacteria in Hong Kong waters” (15/2016), PI, HK$998,673
  • 01/2016-12/2018. Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) Early Career Scheme (ECS), “Metabolism and evolution of uncultivated members of a generalist marine bacterial lineage” (24101015), PI, HK$1,067,343

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