Dr Jiabao Xu

  • Lecturer (Biomedical Engineering)

Biography

After completing my MSci degree in Chemistry at Imperial College London, I obtained my PhD degree in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford in 2020. I joined the Univeristy of Glasgow as a lecturer in 2023. My research focus has been around single-cell techniques, exploring diverse aspects of cellular metabolism in bacteria and mammalian cells. My work, featured in leading journals like PNAS, Advanced Science and Analytical Chemistry, has positioned me as an innovator in single-cell studies.

I have been at the forefront of new innovations in the development of data mining and artificial intelligence models in single-cell Raman studies. My expertise has been instrumental in an Innovate UK-China call for the identification of clinical pathogens by Raman spectroscopy using large datasets (>500k single-cell spectra). Currently, the methods are undergoing extensive validation studies in a series of hospitals in China. 

Since 2016, I have been investigating cell metabolism in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). This work has yielded promising results, including the discovery of novel biomarkers in the blood of ME/CFS patients as well as a pioneering single-cell Raman platform enhanced by ensemble learning as a diagnostic test. This approach demonstrated exceptional promise as a diagnostic tool for ME/CFS, achieving an accuracy rate of 91% across 98 subjects. The implications of this innovation extend beyond ME/CFS, holding great potential for diagnosing a wide range of chronic diseases. 

My research journey equipped me with expertise in single-cell Raman spectroscopy, advanced optical imaging, cell sorting, isotope probing, data mining and artificial intelligence. I have published 22 peer-reviewed papers and a book chapter on Raman applications. I have served as guest editors in Frontiers in Microbiology and Cancers, leading themes focused on single-cell technologies.

Research interests

My current reserarch interests are development and applications of single-cell technologies in the biomedical field. More particularly, my activities encompass the following domains:

  • Single-cell Raman diagnosis of diseases using PBMCs from blood with a focus on chronic fatigue, such as post-acute infection chronic syndromes like ME/CFS, long COVID and chronic Lyme diseases, as well as inflammatory autoimmune diseases.
  • Mutimodal data mining combining single-cell, omics, and clinical data to address biomedical questions
  • Stem cell research using single-cell technologies to look at stem cell differentiation stages and aging

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2017
Number of items: 28.

2025

Wang, Y. et al. (2025) Microwell-assembled aluminum substrates for enhanced single-cell analysis: A novel approach for cancer cell profiling by Raman spectroscopy. Talanta, 283, 127149. (doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2024.127149) (PMID:39515049)

2024

Zhang, J., Lin, H., Xu, J. , Zhang, M., Ge, X., Zhang, C., Huang, W. E. and Cheng, J.-X. (2024) High-throughput single-cell sorting by stimulated Raman-activated cell ejection. Science Advances, 10(50), eadn637. (doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adn6373) (PMID:39661682) (PMCID:PMC11633747)

Peng, Q., Dong, Y., Chen, Y., Glidle, A., Kong, L., Yin, H. , Xu, J. and Yang, K. (2024) Rapid profiling of fish cell nitrogen metabolism with single-cell Raman spectroscopy: unveiling enzyme’s role in ammonia detoxification. Talanta, 277, 1216389. (doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2024.126389)

Xu, J. , Chen, D., Wu, W., Ji, X., Dou, X., Gao, X., Li, J., Zhang, X., Huang, W. E. and Xiong, D. (2024) A metabolic map and artificial intelligence-aided identification of nasopharyngeal carcinoma via a single-cell Raman platform. British Journal of Cancer, 130, pp. 1635-1646. (doi: 10.1038/s41416-024-02637-3) (PMID:38454165)

Tabish, T. A. et al. (2024) S-nitrosocysteamine-functionalised porous graphene oxide nanosheets as nitric oxide delivery vehicles for cardiovascular applications. Redox Biology, 72, 103144. (doi: 10.1016/j.redox.2024.103144) (PMID:38613920) (PMCID:PMC11026843)

Xu, J. and Morten, K. J. (2024) Raman micro-spectroscopy as a tool to study immunometabolism. Biochemical Society Transactions, 52(2), pp. 733-745. (doi: 10.1042/BST20230794) (PMID:38477393) (PMCID:PMC11088913)

Peng, Q., Sun, H., Neilson, L. J., Maknitikul, S., Xu, J. , Kong, L., Zanivan, S. and Yin, H. (2024) Single-Cell Analysis Reveals the Impact of Tumor-derived matrix on Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts. In: ICBSP '24: Proceedings of the 2024 9th International Conference on Biomedical Imaging, Signal Processing, Hong Kong Shaanxi Hong Kong, 18-20 Oct 2024, (doi: 10.1145/3707172.3707191)

2023

Tu, W., Xu, J. , Thompson, I. P. and Huang, W. E. (2023) Engineering artificial photosynthesis based on rhodopsin for CO2 fixation. Nature Communications, 14(1), 8012. (doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-43524-4) (PMID:38049399) (PMCID:PMC10696030)

Xu, J. , Lodge, T., Kingdon, C., Strong, J. W. L., Maclennan, J., Lacerda, E., Kujawski, S., Zalewski, P., Huang, W. E. and Morten, K. J. (2023) Developing a blood cell‐based diagnostic test for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome using peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Advanced Science, 10(30), 2302146. (doi: 10.1002/advs.202302146) (PMID:37653608) (PMCID:PMC10602530)

Xu, J. , Cui, L. and Song, Y. (2023) Editorial: Single-cell tools to combat antimicrobial resistance. Frontiers in Microbiology, 1256107. (doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1256107) (PMID:37533820) (PMCID:PMC10392916)

2022

Davison, P. A., Tu, W., Xu, J. , Della Valle, S., Thompson, I. P., Neil Hunter, C. and Huang, W. E. (2022) Engineering a rhodopsin-based photo-electrosynthetic system in bacteria for CO2 fixation. ACS Synthetic Biology, 11(11), pp. 3805-3816. (doi: 10.1021/acssynbio.2c00397) (PMID:36264158) (PMCID:PMC9680020)

González-Cebrián, A. et al. (2022) Diagnosis of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome with partial least squares discriminant analysis: relevance of blood extracellular vesicles. Frontiers in Medicine, 9, 842991. (doi: 10.3389/fmed.2022.842991)

2021

Wang, Y., Xu, J. , Cui, D., Kong, L., Chen, S., Xie, W. and Zhang, C. (2021) Classification and identification of archaea using single-cell raman ejection and artificial intelligence: implications for investigating uncultivated microorganisms. Analytical Chemistry, 93(51), pp. 17012-17019. (doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.1c03495) (PMID:34910467)

Webb, I., Xu, J. , Sanchez-Canizares, C., Karunakaran, R., Ramachandran, V., Rutten, P., East, A., Huang, W., Watmough, N. and Poole, P. (2021) Regulation and characterization of mutants of fixABCX in Rhizobium leguminosarum. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, 34(10), pp. 1167-1180. (doi: 10.1094/mpmi-02-21-0037-r)

Xu, J. , Yu, T., Zois, C. E., Cheng, J.-X., Tang, Y., Harris, A. L. and Huang, W. E. (2021) Unveiling cancer metabolism through spontaneous and coherent raman spectroscopy and stable isotope probing. Cancers, 13(7), 1718. (doi: 10.3390/cancers13071718) (PMID:33916413) (PMCID:PMC8038603)

2020

Xu, J. , Li, X., Guo, Z., Huang, W. E. and Cheng, J.-X. (2020) Fingerprinting bacterial metabolic response to erythromycin by Raman-integrated mid-infrared photothermal microscopy. Analytical Chemistry, 92(21), pp. 14459-14465. (doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.0c02489) (PMID:33089997) (PMCID:PMC8025921)

Kiat Ng, C., Xu, J. , Cai, Z., Yang, L., Thompson, I. P., Huang, W. E. and Cao, B. (2020) Elevated intracellular cyclic‐di‐GMP level in Shewanella oneidensis increases expression of c‐type cytochromes. Microbial Biotechnology, 13(6), pp. 1904-1916. (doi: 10.1111/1751-7915.13636) (PMID:32729223) (PMCID:PMC7533324)

Hsu, C.-C., Xu, J. , Brinkhof, B., Wang, H., Cui, Z., Huang, W. E. and Ye, H. (2020) A single-cell Raman-based platform to identify developmental stages of human pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(31), pp. 18412-18423. (doi: 10.1073/pnas.2001906117) (PMID:32694205) (PMCID:PMC7414136)

Wang, Y., Xu, J. , Kong, L., Li, B., Li, H., Huang, W. E. and Zheng, C. (2020) Raman‐activated sorting of antibiotic‐resistant bacteria in human gut microbiota. Environmental Microbiology, 22(7), pp. 2613-2624. (doi: 10.1111/1462-2920.14962) (PMID:32114713) (PMCID:PMC7383503)

WANG, Y., Xu, J. , Kong, L., Liu, T., Yi, L., Wang, H., Huang, W. E. and Zheng, C. (2020) Raman–deuterium isotope probing to study metabolic activities of single bacterial cells in human intestinal microbiota. Microbial Biotechnology, 13(2), pp. 572-583. (doi: 10.1111/1751-7915.13519) (PMID:31821744) (PMCID:PMC7017835)

2019

Wang, Y., Zhang, Z.-F., Xu, X.-J., Chen, C., Xu, J.-B. , Kong, L.-C., Xie, P., Zheng, C.-M., Ren, N.-Q. and Lee, D.-J. (2019) Effective removal of methyl siloxane from water by sewage activated sludge microbes: biodegradation behavior and characteristics of microbial community. Bioresource Technology Reports, 7, 100209. (doi: 10.1016/j.biteb.2019.100209)

Xu, J. , Preciado-Llanes, L., Aulicino, A., Decker, C. M., Depke, M., Salazar, M. G., Schmidt, F., Simmons, A. and Huang, W. E. (2019) Single-cell and time-resolved profiling of intracellular salmonella metabolism in primary human cells. Analytical Chemistry, 91(12), pp. 7729-7737. (doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.9b01010) (PMID:31117406) (PMCID:PMC7006958)

Liang, B. et al. (2019) Raman profiling of embryo culture medium to identify aneuploid and euploid embryos. Fertility and Sterility, 111(4), 753-762.e1. (doi: 10.1016/j.fertnstert.2018.11.036) (PMID:30683589)

Chen, J. X., Steel, H., Wu, Y.-H., Wang, Y., Xu, J. , Rampley, C. P.N., Thompson, I. P., Papachristodoulou, A. and Huang, W. E. (2019) Development of aspirin-inducible biosensors in Escherichia coli and SimCells. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 85(6), e02959-18. (doi: 10.1128/aem.02959-18) (PMID:30658983) (PMCID:PMC6414386)

Xu, J. , Potter, M., Tomas, C., Elson, J. L., Morten, K. J., Poulton, J., Wang, N., Jin, H., Hou, Z. and Huang, W. E. (2019) A new approach to find biomarkers in chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) by single-cell Raman micro-spectroscopy. Analyst, 144(3), pp. 913-920. (doi: 10.1039/C8AN01437J) (PMID:30207334)

2017

Xu, J. , Zhu, D., Ibrahim, A.D., Allen, C.C.R., Gibson, C.M., Fowler, P.W., Song, Y. and Huang, W.E. (2017) Raman deuterium isotope probing reveals microbial metabolism at the single-cell level. Analytical Chemistry, 89(24), pp. 13305-13312. (doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.7b03461) (PMID:29135226)

Song, Y., Cui, L., Ángel Siles López, J., Xu, J. , Zhu, Y.-G., Thompson, I. P. and Huang, W. E. (2017) Raman-deuterium isotope probing for in-situ identification of antimicrobial resistant bacteria in Thames River. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 16648. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-16898-x) (PMID:29192181) (PMCID:PMC5709456)

Xu, J. , Webb, I., Poole, P. and Huang, W.E. (2017) Label-free discrimination of rhizobial bacteroids and mutants by single-cell Raman microspectroscopy. Analytical Chemistry, 89(12), pp. 6336-6340. (doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.7b01160) (PMID:28541039)

This list was generated on Wed Feb 19 15:48:18 2025 GMT.
Jump to: Articles | Conference Proceedings
Number of items: 28.

Articles

Wang, Y. et al. (2025) Microwell-assembled aluminum substrates for enhanced single-cell analysis: A novel approach for cancer cell profiling by Raman spectroscopy. Talanta, 283, 127149. (doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2024.127149) (PMID:39515049)

Zhang, J., Lin, H., Xu, J. , Zhang, M., Ge, X., Zhang, C., Huang, W. E. and Cheng, J.-X. (2024) High-throughput single-cell sorting by stimulated Raman-activated cell ejection. Science Advances, 10(50), eadn637. (doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adn6373) (PMID:39661682) (PMCID:PMC11633747)

Peng, Q., Dong, Y., Chen, Y., Glidle, A., Kong, L., Yin, H. , Xu, J. and Yang, K. (2024) Rapid profiling of fish cell nitrogen metabolism with single-cell Raman spectroscopy: unveiling enzyme’s role in ammonia detoxification. Talanta, 277, 1216389. (doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2024.126389)

Xu, J. , Chen, D., Wu, W., Ji, X., Dou, X., Gao, X., Li, J., Zhang, X., Huang, W. E. and Xiong, D. (2024) A metabolic map and artificial intelligence-aided identification of nasopharyngeal carcinoma via a single-cell Raman platform. British Journal of Cancer, 130, pp. 1635-1646. (doi: 10.1038/s41416-024-02637-3) (PMID:38454165)

Tabish, T. A. et al. (2024) S-nitrosocysteamine-functionalised porous graphene oxide nanosheets as nitric oxide delivery vehicles for cardiovascular applications. Redox Biology, 72, 103144. (doi: 10.1016/j.redox.2024.103144) (PMID:38613920) (PMCID:PMC11026843)

Xu, J. and Morten, K. J. (2024) Raman micro-spectroscopy as a tool to study immunometabolism. Biochemical Society Transactions, 52(2), pp. 733-745. (doi: 10.1042/BST20230794) (PMID:38477393) (PMCID:PMC11088913)

Tu, W., Xu, J. , Thompson, I. P. and Huang, W. E. (2023) Engineering artificial photosynthesis based on rhodopsin for CO2 fixation. Nature Communications, 14(1), 8012. (doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-43524-4) (PMID:38049399) (PMCID:PMC10696030)

Xu, J. , Lodge, T., Kingdon, C., Strong, J. W. L., Maclennan, J., Lacerda, E., Kujawski, S., Zalewski, P., Huang, W. E. and Morten, K. J. (2023) Developing a blood cell‐based diagnostic test for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome using peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Advanced Science, 10(30), 2302146. (doi: 10.1002/advs.202302146) (PMID:37653608) (PMCID:PMC10602530)

Xu, J. , Cui, L. and Song, Y. (2023) Editorial: Single-cell tools to combat antimicrobial resistance. Frontiers in Microbiology, 1256107. (doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1256107) (PMID:37533820) (PMCID:PMC10392916)

Davison, P. A., Tu, W., Xu, J. , Della Valle, S., Thompson, I. P., Neil Hunter, C. and Huang, W. E. (2022) Engineering a rhodopsin-based photo-electrosynthetic system in bacteria for CO2 fixation. ACS Synthetic Biology, 11(11), pp. 3805-3816. (doi: 10.1021/acssynbio.2c00397) (PMID:36264158) (PMCID:PMC9680020)

González-Cebrián, A. et al. (2022) Diagnosis of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome with partial least squares discriminant analysis: relevance of blood extracellular vesicles. Frontiers in Medicine, 9, 842991. (doi: 10.3389/fmed.2022.842991)

Wang, Y., Xu, J. , Cui, D., Kong, L., Chen, S., Xie, W. and Zhang, C. (2021) Classification and identification of archaea using single-cell raman ejection and artificial intelligence: implications for investigating uncultivated microorganisms. Analytical Chemistry, 93(51), pp. 17012-17019. (doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.1c03495) (PMID:34910467)

Webb, I., Xu, J. , Sanchez-Canizares, C., Karunakaran, R., Ramachandran, V., Rutten, P., East, A., Huang, W., Watmough, N. and Poole, P. (2021) Regulation and characterization of mutants of fixABCX in Rhizobium leguminosarum. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, 34(10), pp. 1167-1180. (doi: 10.1094/mpmi-02-21-0037-r)

Xu, J. , Yu, T., Zois, C. E., Cheng, J.-X., Tang, Y., Harris, A. L. and Huang, W. E. (2021) Unveiling cancer metabolism through spontaneous and coherent raman spectroscopy and stable isotope probing. Cancers, 13(7), 1718. (doi: 10.3390/cancers13071718) (PMID:33916413) (PMCID:PMC8038603)

Xu, J. , Li, X., Guo, Z., Huang, W. E. and Cheng, J.-X. (2020) Fingerprinting bacterial metabolic response to erythromycin by Raman-integrated mid-infrared photothermal microscopy. Analytical Chemistry, 92(21), pp. 14459-14465. (doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.0c02489) (PMID:33089997) (PMCID:PMC8025921)

Kiat Ng, C., Xu, J. , Cai, Z., Yang, L., Thompson, I. P., Huang, W. E. and Cao, B. (2020) Elevated intracellular cyclic‐di‐GMP level in Shewanella oneidensis increases expression of c‐type cytochromes. Microbial Biotechnology, 13(6), pp. 1904-1916. (doi: 10.1111/1751-7915.13636) (PMID:32729223) (PMCID:PMC7533324)

Hsu, C.-C., Xu, J. , Brinkhof, B., Wang, H., Cui, Z., Huang, W. E. and Ye, H. (2020) A single-cell Raman-based platform to identify developmental stages of human pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(31), pp. 18412-18423. (doi: 10.1073/pnas.2001906117) (PMID:32694205) (PMCID:PMC7414136)

Wang, Y., Xu, J. , Kong, L., Li, B., Li, H., Huang, W. E. and Zheng, C. (2020) Raman‐activated sorting of antibiotic‐resistant bacteria in human gut microbiota. Environmental Microbiology, 22(7), pp. 2613-2624. (doi: 10.1111/1462-2920.14962) (PMID:32114713) (PMCID:PMC7383503)

WANG, Y., Xu, J. , Kong, L., Liu, T., Yi, L., Wang, H., Huang, W. E. and Zheng, C. (2020) Raman–deuterium isotope probing to study metabolic activities of single bacterial cells in human intestinal microbiota. Microbial Biotechnology, 13(2), pp. 572-583. (doi: 10.1111/1751-7915.13519) (PMID:31821744) (PMCID:PMC7017835)

Wang, Y., Zhang, Z.-F., Xu, X.-J., Chen, C., Xu, J.-B. , Kong, L.-C., Xie, P., Zheng, C.-M., Ren, N.-Q. and Lee, D.-J. (2019) Effective removal of methyl siloxane from water by sewage activated sludge microbes: biodegradation behavior and characteristics of microbial community. Bioresource Technology Reports, 7, 100209. (doi: 10.1016/j.biteb.2019.100209)

Xu, J. , Preciado-Llanes, L., Aulicino, A., Decker, C. M., Depke, M., Salazar, M. G., Schmidt, F., Simmons, A. and Huang, W. E. (2019) Single-cell and time-resolved profiling of intracellular salmonella metabolism in primary human cells. Analytical Chemistry, 91(12), pp. 7729-7737. (doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.9b01010) (PMID:31117406) (PMCID:PMC7006958)

Liang, B. et al. (2019) Raman profiling of embryo culture medium to identify aneuploid and euploid embryos. Fertility and Sterility, 111(4), 753-762.e1. (doi: 10.1016/j.fertnstert.2018.11.036) (PMID:30683589)

Chen, J. X., Steel, H., Wu, Y.-H., Wang, Y., Xu, J. , Rampley, C. P.N., Thompson, I. P., Papachristodoulou, A. and Huang, W. E. (2019) Development of aspirin-inducible biosensors in Escherichia coli and SimCells. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 85(6), e02959-18. (doi: 10.1128/aem.02959-18) (PMID:30658983) (PMCID:PMC6414386)

Xu, J. , Potter, M., Tomas, C., Elson, J. L., Morten, K. J., Poulton, J., Wang, N., Jin, H., Hou, Z. and Huang, W. E. (2019) A new approach to find biomarkers in chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) by single-cell Raman micro-spectroscopy. Analyst, 144(3), pp. 913-920. (doi: 10.1039/C8AN01437J) (PMID:30207334)

Xu, J. , Zhu, D., Ibrahim, A.D., Allen, C.C.R., Gibson, C.M., Fowler, P.W., Song, Y. and Huang, W.E. (2017) Raman deuterium isotope probing reveals microbial metabolism at the single-cell level. Analytical Chemistry, 89(24), pp. 13305-13312. (doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.7b03461) (PMID:29135226)

Song, Y., Cui, L., Ángel Siles López, J., Xu, J. , Zhu, Y.-G., Thompson, I. P. and Huang, W. E. (2017) Raman-deuterium isotope probing for in-situ identification of antimicrobial resistant bacteria in Thames River. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 16648. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-16898-x) (PMID:29192181) (PMCID:PMC5709456)

Xu, J. , Webb, I., Poole, P. and Huang, W.E. (2017) Label-free discrimination of rhizobial bacteroids and mutants by single-cell Raman microspectroscopy. Analytical Chemistry, 89(12), pp. 6336-6340. (doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.7b01160) (PMID:28541039)

Conference Proceedings

Peng, Q., Sun, H., Neilson, L. J., Maknitikul, S., Xu, J. , Kong, L., Zanivan, S. and Yin, H. (2024) Single-Cell Analysis Reveals the Impact of Tumor-derived matrix on Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts. In: ICBSP '24: Proceedings of the 2024 9th International Conference on Biomedical Imaging, Signal Processing, Hong Kong Shaanxi Hong Kong, 18-20 Oct 2024, (doi: 10.1145/3707172.3707191)

This list was generated on Wed Feb 19 15:48:18 2025 GMT.

Professional activities & recognition

Editorial boards

  • 2022: Frontiers in Microbiology
  • 2022: Cancers
  • 2024: Heliyon

Selected international presentations

  • 2017: ASM Microbe (New Orleans, USA)
  • 2023: ILADS (Boston, USA)