Emma Jean Chory

Research Themes

Biosensors & Bioinstrumentation, Computational Modeling of Biological Systems, Drug & Gene Delivery, Immune Engineering, Synthetic & Systems Biology

Bio

Emma Chory is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. She received her B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Northeastern University and her doctorate in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University. She became interested in epigenetics when she worked with Dr. James Bradner at Harvard Medical School and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute developing inhibitors of histone-modifying proteins that cause Mixed Lineage Leukemia. As a PhD student at Stanford, she worked with Gerald Crabtree studying chromatin remodeling complexes, and used synthetic biology in mammalian stem cells to discover how nucleosome turnover establishes cell fate and is mis-regulated in cancer. As postdoctoral fellow with Kevin Esvelt and Jim Collins at MIT, she developed novel systems to enable the high-throughput, systematic, and quantitative evolution of therapeutic proteins and cellular populations using automation and directed evolution.

Education

• Ph.D. Stanford University, 2018

Positions

• Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Courses Taught

• BME 791: Graduate Independent Study
• BME 706L: Biotech Design II
• BME 590: Special Topics in Biomedical Engineering
• BME 493: Projects in Biomedical Engineering (GE)
• BME 406L: Biotech Design II
• BME 394: Projects in Biomedical Engineering (GE)

Publications

• Chory EJ, Wang M, Ceribelli M, Michalowska AM, Golas S, Beck E, et al. High-throughput approaches to uncover synergistic drug combinations in leukemia. SLAS discovery : advancing life sciences R & D. 2023 Jun;28(4):193–201.
• Garzón-Porras AM, Chory E, Gryder BE. Dynamic Opposition of Histone Modifications. ACS chemical biology. 2023 Apr;18(4):1027–36.
• Golas S, Chory EJ. Proximity labeling of endogenous protein interactions enabled by directed evolution. Trends in biotechnology. 2023 Mar;41(3):301–3.
• Zhao EM, Mao AS, de Puig H, Zhang K, Tippens ND, Tan X, et al. RNA-responsive elements for eukaryotic translational control. Nature biotechnology. 2022 Apr;40(4):539–45.
• DeBenedictis EA, Chory EJ, Gretton DW, Wang B, Golas S, Esvelt KM. Systematic molecular evolution enables robust biomolecule discovery. Nature methods. 2022 Jan;19(1):55–64.
• Chory EJ, Gretton DW, DeBenedictis EA, Esvelt KM. Enabling high-throughput biology with flexible open-source automation. Molecular systems biology. 2021 Mar;17(3):e9942.
• Chory EJ, Kirkland JG, Chang C-Y, D’Andrea VD, Gourisankar S, Dykhuizen EC, et al. Chemical Inhibitors of a Selective SWI/SNF Function Synergize with ATR Inhibition in Cancer Cell Killing. ACS chemical biology. 2020 Jun;15(6):1685–96.
• DeBenedictis EA, Chory EJ, Gretton D, Wang B, Esvelt K. A high-throughput platform for feedback-controlled directed evolution. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. 2020.
• Stokes JM, Yang K, Swanson K, Jin W, Cubillos-Ruiz A, Donghia NM, et al. A Deep Learning Approach to Antibiotic Discovery. Cell. 2020 Apr;181(2):475–83.
• Stokes JM, Yang K, Swanson K, Jin W, Cubillos-Ruiz A, Donghia NM, et al. A Deep Learning Approach to Antibiotic Discovery. Cell. 2020 Feb;180(4):688-702.e13.
• Chory EJ, Calarco JP, Hathaway NA, Bell O, Neel DS, Crabtree GR. Nucleosome Turnover Regulates Histone Methylation Patterns over the Genome. Molecular cell. 2019 Jan;73(1):61-72.e3.
• Stanton BZ, Chory EJ, Crabtree GR. Chemically induced proximity in biology and medicine. Science (New York, NY). 2018 Mar;359(6380):eaao5902.
• Braun SMG, Kirkland JG, Chory EJ, Husmann D, Calarco JP, Crabtree GR. Rapid and reversible epigenome editing by endogenous chromatin regulators. Nature communications. 2017 Sep;8(1):560.
• Kadoch C, Williams RT, Calarco JP, Miller EL, Weber CM, Braun SMG, et al. Dynamics of BAF-Polycomb complex opposition on heterochromatin in normal and oncogenic states. Nature genetics. 2017 Feb;49(2):213–22.
• Yi JS, Federation AJ, Qi J, Dhe-Paganon S, Hadler M, Xu X, et al. Structure-guided DOT1L probe optimization by label-free ligand displacement. ACS chemical biology. 2015 Mar;10(3):667–74.
• Yu W, Chory EJ, Wernimont AK, Tempel W, Scopton A, Federation A, et al. Erratum: Catalytic site remodelling of the DOT1L methyltransferase by selective inhibitors (Nature Communications (2012) 3 (1288) DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2304). Nature Communications. 2013 Jun 12;4.
• Vickers DAL, Chory EJ, Harless MC, Murthy SK. p38 signaling and receptor recycling events in a microfluidic endothelial cell adhesion assay. PloS one. 2013 Jan;8(6):e65828.
• Vickers DAL, Chory EJ, Murthy SK. Separation of two phenotypically similar cell types via a single common marker in microfluidic channels. Lab on a chip. 2012 Sep;12(18):3399–407.
• Yu W, Chory EJ, Wernimont AK, Tempel W, Scopton A, Federation A, et al. Catalytic site remodelling of the DOT1L methyltransferase by selective inhibitors. Nature communications. 2012 Jan;3:1288.

In The News

• Emma Chory Uses Robotics to Speed Up Cellular Evolution (Aug 24, 2023 | Duke Pratt School of Engineering)