Recent advances in protein engineering, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology have revolutionized our ability to construct new biosynthetic pathways and engineer platform organisms to produce a wide variety of value-added products. This seminar includes three aspects: engineering microorganisms to synthesize value-added compounds, studying important biosynthetic mechanisms, and developing synthetic biology tools for efficient manipulation of large gene clusters. Protein engineering and metabolic engineering strategies were utilized to enable E. coli, S. cerevisiae and S. lividans to produce valuable compounds including triacetic acid lactone (a key precursor); fosfomycin (a FDA-approved antibiotic); and butanol (a potential biofuel). Meanwhile, interesting enzymes were characterized and important biosynthetic mechanisms were investigated. This seminar will also provide an overview of the activities involved in developing synthetic biology strategies to manipulate large gene clusters. Three generations of designs will be introduced, including DNA assembler, a custom-designed versatile shuttle and a plug-and-play scaffold. All these enabling tools are highly desired in construction of large biochemical pathways, creation of artificial gene clusters, and activation of cryptic pathways for potential drug discovery.

Dr. Zengyi Shao will join the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Iowa State University as an assistant professor on Jan, 2013. She is currently a research assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois in 2009 and B. S. in Biochemistry from Nankai University. She is one recipient of the prestigious research grant National Academies Keck Futures Initiative Award in 2010.

Dr. Shao’s current research mainly focuses on enabling biosynthesis of high-value compounds through protein engineering, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology strategies. Her future research interests lie in exploring synthetic biology to engineer microbial consortia to address the challenges associated with energy sustainability and human health.