BAE Seminar: Dr. Hui Lin; Tuesday, January 13, 2015; 1:10PM; 2045 Bainer Hall

Tuesday, January 13, 2015 
1:10 PM, 2045 Bainer Hall
 

Topic: "Directed Evolution and Domestication for Improving Enzyme activities, Changing Protein Function and Increasing Fungal Conidiation" 

Speaker: Dr. Hui Lin 
Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering 
University of California, Davis 

Abstract 

Due to the increasing concerns about limited fossil resources and environmental problems, there has been much interest in integrating bioprocesses into chemical production. Microorganisms, as the Earth's first synthetic chemists, have been widely applied in the brewing and food, biofuel and pharmaceutical industries. Since most of the native isolated microorganisms do not allow enough efficient production, metabolic engineering has been employed to enhance their production. For one step enzymatic reactions, we applied rational protein design to engineered styrene monooxygenase for higher enzymatic activity, changing substrate preference and engineered a hydroxynitrile Lyase to esterase (switch enzyme function). But the directed evolution cannot be applied in improving complex traits, especially for those uncharacterized processes. We applied experimental evolution (domestication) to evolved T. citrinoviride for faster cellulose degradation, which is a known complex metabolic process, and also evolved T. citrinoride for a huge number of conidia production, which is an uncharacterized complex process, in liquid culture. 


Coffee and cookies will be served.

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