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Britton Chance Distinguished Lecture in Engineering and Medicine

The 2008 Britton Chance Distinguished Lecture in Engineering and Medicine sponsored by the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Institute for Medicine and Engineering.

Synthetic Biology for Synthetic Chemistry

Jay Keasling

Bard Howe Distinguished Professor of Biochemical Engineering, Departments of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Faculty Scientist and Division Director, Physical Biosciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Chief Executive Officer, Joint BioEnergy Institute

Wednesday, October 22, 2008, 3:15 PM
Wu and Chen Auditorium, Levine Hall

a reception will follow the lecture

Abstract

The richness and versatility of biological systems make them ideally suited to solve some of the world’s most significant challenges, such as converting cheap, renewable resources into energy-rich molecules; producing high-quality, inexpensive drugs to fight disease; and remediating polluted sites.  Over the years, significant strides have been made in engineering microorganisms to produce fuels, bulk chemicals, and valuable drugs from inexpensive starting materials; to detect and degrade nerve agents as well as less toxic organic pollutants; and to accumulate metals and reduce radionuclides.  The components needed to engineer the chemistry inside a microbial cell are significantly different from those commonly used to overproduce pharmaceutical proteins.  Synthetic biology has had and will continue to have a significant impact on the development of these components to engineer cellular metabolism and microbial chassis to host the chemistry.  The ready availability of more well-characterized gene expression components and hosts for chemical synthesis, standards for the connection of these components to make larger functioning devices, computer aided design software, and debugging tools for biological designs will decrease both the time and the support needed to construct these designs.  Some of the most important tools for engineering bacterial metabolism and their use for production of the anti-malarial drug artemisinin and for production of biofuels are reviewed.

Jay Keasling is the Bard Howe Distinguished Professor of Biochemical Engineering in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley.  Dr. Keasling is also Senior Faculty Scientist and Division Director in the Physical Biosciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Chief Executive Officer of the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, CA. Dr. Keasling was an early pioneer in synthetic biology and its application to redesigning microorganisms for production of complex chemicals and for degradation of toxic, environmental contaminants.  Dr. Keasling’s laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley developed many early tools for manipulating the metabolism of microorganisms and then used these tools to develop microbial production processes for specialty chemicals, drugs, and biodegradable plastics and for degradation of nerve agents and pesticides.  Dr. Keasling’s laboratory engineered both Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli to produce a readily-convertible precursor to the effective, anti-malarial drug artemisinin.  Recently, Dr. Keasling has turned his attention to engineering microorganisms to produce biofuels, work that is performed at the Joint BioEnergy Institute. Dr. Keasling has founded three synthetic biology companies (Amyris, LS9, and Codon Devices) and has published over 150 refereed journal articles, conference proceedings, and book chapters.  He has four granted patents and over 28 patents pending. Dr. Keasling has won several awards, including the Professional Progress Award from the American Institute for Chemical Engineers in 2007, the first ever Scientist of the Year award from Discover Magazine in 2006, and the Technology Pioneer award from the World Economic Forum in 2005.

Britton Chance, Eldridge Reeves Johnson University Professor Emeritus of Biophysics, Physical Chemistry and Radiologic Physics at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of the world’s leaders in transforming theoretical science into useful biomedical and clinical applications. Examples of his pioneering contributions to fundamental biomedical science are his discovery of numerous enzyme-substrate compounds, World War II development of computers for Radar, the elucidation of the fundamental principles of control of bioenergetics and metabolism, the first human subject study using ³¹P NMR (phosphorous nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy and more recently optical spectroscopy and imaging of human brain and breast. Through decades of scholarly mentorship of colleagues in disciplines ranging from mathematics to clinical medicine, he has brought additional distinction to this University and multiplied its contributions to improving the human condition.
           Professor Chance received his undergraduate degree from Penn’s Towne Scientific School in 1935 and his doctoral degrees from both Penn and the University of Cambridge. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the Institute of Medicine and is a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. Among very many other recognitions, he has received the National Medal of Science, the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the American Philosophical Society, the Biological Physics Prize from the American Physical Society, and honorary degrees from the Karolinska Institut, the Medical College of Ohio at Toledo, Semmelweis University, Hahnemann Medical College and the Universities of Pennsylvania, Helsinki, Dusseldorf and Buenos Aires.

Previous Britton Chance Distinguished Lecturers