Personal Bio
Caleb is a third year grad student in the Xiao lab but has been a part of the lab since Dr. Xiao joined NCSU in 2022, being the first NSCU student to join as an undergrad. He first chose chemistry as his major from an interest in forensic science but quickly found similar interest in analytical chemistry and its multitude of applications. Outside of the lab Caleb enjoys taking time to cook and try the restaurants in the general Triangle area.
Research Summary
Since Caleb has been involved in the lab since undergrad, he has had the opportunity to learn many (but not all) of the various techniques and assays in the lab. Currently, Caleb’s focus in the lab is on both aptamer isolation and characterization. The lab has many techniques to determine the performance of the aptamers we generate, including instrumentation like Isothermal Titration Calorimetry and exonuclease based assays for rapid aptamer screening. His first two years have focused on learning various characterization techniques and developing a real-time exonuclease digestion method for high-throughput aptamer characterization.
Since starting his third year, he has begun to focus more on aptamer isolation through the library-immobilized SELEX strategy employed and advanced in our lab. Caleb has been working to isolate aptamers for biologically and commercially relevant small molecules to be used for direct monitoring of key markers which indicate cultured cell’s health. He looks forward to seeing these and other aptamers through the entire isolation, characterization, and sensor development process, knowing they have the potential to be directly impactful to a multitude of fields and applications.
Publications List
- Yu H., Canoura J., Byrd C., Alkhamis O., Bacon A., Yan A., Sullenger B., & Xiao Y. (2025). Improving Aptamer Affinity and Determining Sequence-Activity Relationships via Motif-SELEX. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 147, 9472–9486.
- Canoura J., Alkhamis O., Byrd C., Wang L., Bryant A., & Xiao Y. (2024). Determining the Precision of High-Throughput Sequencing and Its Influence on Aptamer Selection. Anal. Chem. 96, 17720-17729
- Wang L., Canoura J., Byrd C., Nguyen T., Alkhamis O., Ly P., & Xiao Y. (2024). Examining the Relationship between Aptamer Complexity and Molecular Discrimination of a Low-Epitope Target. ACS Cent. Sci. 10, 2213 – 2228.
- Canoura J., Nguyen T., Byrd C., Hill R., Liu Y.Z. & Xiao Y. (2024) Generation of high-affinity aptamers for indazole synthetic cannabinoids. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 96, 11488 – 11497.
