Northwestern Events Calendar

Apr
1
2015

SQI Seminar: Michael C. Jewett

When: Wednesday, April 1, 2015
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM CT

Where: Robert H Lurie Medical Research Center, Baldwin Auditorium, 303 E. Superior, Chicago, IL 60611 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Contact: Jill Johnson   (312) 503-0131

Group: Simpson Querrey Institute for BioNanotechnology (SQI)

Category: Lectures & Meetings

Description:

"Establishing cell-free synthetic biology for the production of therapeutics, materials, and chemicals"

Imagine a world in which we could adapt biology to manufacture any therapeutic, material, or chemical from renewable resources, both quickly and on demand. Industrial biotechnology is one of the most attractive approaches for addressing this need, particularly when large-scale chemical synthesis is untenable. Unfortunately, the fraction of biobased products amenable to economical production remains somewhat limited. Common problems afflicting the current state-of-the-art include low volumetric productivities (g/L/h), build-up of toxic intermediates or products, byproduct losses via competing pathways, and constraints arising from the fact that microbial growth and adaptation objectives are often opposed to the overproduction and release of a single product. To overcome these limitations, we are expanding the scope of the traditional bioengineering model by using cell-free systems to harness ensembles of catalytic proteins prepared from crude lysates, or extracts, of cells for the production of target products. Rather than attempt to balance the tug-of-war between the cell’s objectives and the engineer’s objectives, we are developing new paradigms for designing, building, and testing cell-free systems that harness and modify biological systems involved in protein synthesis and metabolism. In this presentation, I will discuss our efforts to develop cost-effective, high-throughput cell-free protein synthesis platforms, expand the chemistry of life using non standard amino acids, construct and evolve synthetic ribosomes, synthesize new classes of biomaterials, and produce sustainable chemicals with ultrahigh productivities. Our work is enabling a deeper understanding of why nature’s designs work the way they do and opening new frontiers for biomanufacturing when cellular toxicity limits commercial feasibility of whole-cell fermentation.

 

 

Bio:
Michael Jewett is an Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. He received his PhD in 2005 at Stanford University. After completing postdoctoral studies as an NSF International Research Fellow at the Center for Microbial Biotechnology in Denmark and as an NIH Pathway to Independence Fellow at the Harvard Medical School, he joined Northwestern in 2009. Dr. Jewett’s lab is developing cell-free biology as an enabling technology for biomanufacturing lifesaving therapeutics, sustainable chemicals, and novel materials, both quickly and on-demand. His lab focuses on designing, constructing, and modifying biological systems involved in protein synthesis and metabolism, with promise to advance new paradigms for synthetic biology. Dr. Jewett is the recipient of the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering in 2011, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2011, the Agilent Early Career Professor Award in 2011 and the 3M non-tenured faculty grant in 2012.

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