Wei Leong CHEW
Wei Leong CHEWAdjunct Assistant Professor
[email protected]

Office Location – 60 Biopolis Street, Genome, #02-01, Singapore 138672

Affiliations

Senior Principal Scientist, Genome Institute of Singapore, A*STAR

Biography

Dr Chew Wei Leong is Senior Principal Scientist at the Genome Institute of Singapore of A*STAR. His team develops technologies to write DNA and RNA, specifically in the areas of gene-editing, CRISPR-Cas, gene therapy, and synthetic genomes. He holds an Adjunct Assistant Professor appointment at the National University of Singapore.

Professional Appointments

Editorial Advisory Board for ACS Catalysis
Editorial Advisory Board for ACS Synthetic Biology

Education

2007 – PhD (Chemical Engineering), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign & National University of Singapore
2002 – B. Eng. (Chemical Engineering), National University of Singapore

Research Interest

Gene editing and synthetic biology

Current Research Projects

Establishing sustainable biomanufacturing platforms for high value compounds using renewable C1 feedstocks
Development of machine learning-enhanced workflows to accelerate enzyme engineering and expand biosynthetic repertoires of challenging enzymes
Exploration of functional proteins for nutrition and development of precision fermentation platforms for their production

Selected Publications

  1. M. Perez, M. Kimoto, P. Rajakumar, C. Suphavilai, R. P. da Silva, H. P. Tan, N. T. X. Ong, H. Nicholas, I. Hirao, W. L. Chew, N. Nagarajan. Direct high-throughput deconvolution of non-canonical bases via nanopore sequencing and bootstrapped learning. Nature Communications (2025).
  2. Chia BS, Seah YFS, Wang B, Shen K, Srivastava D, W L Chew. Engineering a new generation of gene editors: Integrating synthetic biology and AI innovations. ACS Synthetic Biology (2025).
  3. Shen K, Seow WY, Keng CT, Lim D, Guo K, Meliani A, Muhammad Bin Hajis I, Chen KH, W L Chew. Spatial Perturb-Seq: Single-Cell Functional Genomics within Intact Tissue Architecture. bioRxiv (2024).
  4. James JS, Dai J, W L Chew, Cai Y. The design and engineering of synthetic genomes. Nature Reviews Genetics (2024).
  5. Choong Tat Keng,Thinesshwary Yogarajah,Regina Ching Hua Lee,Irfan Bin Hajis Muhammad,Bing Shao Chia,Suraj Rajan Vasandani,Daryl Shern Lim,Ke Guo,Yi Hao Wong,Chee Keng Mok,Justin Jang Hann Chu, Wei Leong Chew. AAV-CRISPR-Cas13 eliminates human enterovirus and prevents death of infected mice. eBioMedicine (2023).
  6. L. Chen, J. E. Park, P. Paa, P. D. Rajakumar, H.T. Prekop, Y. T. Chew, S. N. Manivannan, W. L. Chew. Programmable C:G to G:C genome editing with CRISPR-Cas9-directed base excision repair proteins. Nature Communications (2021).

* Corresponding author; # Co-first author