Research in the laboratory of Dr. Wong encompasses a wide variety of projects directed toward development of new chemical and enzymatic strategies and methods for the synthesis of biologically active compounds and designed molecules to tackle the problem of carbohydrate-mediated biological recognitions, sequence-specific RNA recognition, and enzymatic reactions. Chemists and biochemists work on projects ranging from chemical and chemoenzymatic synthesis of bioactive compounds to enzyme engineering and development of new tools to study major problems in living systems. Currently, research is being performed in the following areas:

• Chemical and enzymatic organic synthesis

• Directed evolution and engineering of enzymes for organic synthesis

• Development of enzyme and receptor inhibitors

• Carbohydrate chemistry and molecular glycobiology

• Programmable one-pot synthesis of oligosaccharides

• Glycoprotein synthesis, probing post-translational glycosylation

• Studies on carbohydrate-mediated recognition, vaccine design

• Development of aminoglycosides and small molecules targeting RNA

• Mechanistic study of enzymatic reactions