Rate My Professor Lin Chao

Chao's research combines computer modeling and laboratory experiments with microbes, bacteria, and viruses to explore ecological and evolutionary processes, taking advantage of their short generation times. His investigations cover the ecology of host-parasite coexistence, evolution of sex, mutation rates, transposable elements, group and individual adaptations, game theory strategies, Fisher’s Geometric Model of Adaptive Evolution, and deleterious and compensatory mutations. Recent work centers on the evolution of microbial aging and senescence, examining asymmetric partitioning of phenotypic damage during cell division in Escherichia coli using time-lapse photography to assess fitness. Key publications include Turner, P. E. and Chao, L. 1999. Prisoner’s Dilemma in an RNA Virus. Nature 398:441-443; Burch, L. C. and Chao, L. 2000. Evolvability of an RNA virus determined by its mutational neighborhood. Nature 406:625-628; Chao, L. 2010. A Model for Damage Load and Its Implications for the Evolution of Bacterial Aging. PLoS Genet 6(8): e1001076; Proenca, A. M. et al. 2018. Age structure landscapes emerge from the equilibrium between aging and rejuvenation in bacterial populations. Nature Communications 9:3722; and Liao, M. J. et al. 2020. Survival of the weakest in non-transitive asymmetric interactions among strains of E. coli. Nature Communications 11:6055.