A5041300861- CRISPR and Genetic Engineering
- Microbial Metabolic Engineering and Bioproduction
- Insect symbiosis and bacterial influences
- Bacterial Genetics and Biotechnology
- Bacteriophages and microbial interactions
- Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research
- Gene Regulatory Network Analysis
- RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms
- Biomedical and Engineering Education
- Biosensors and Analytical Detection
- Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
- Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology
- Transgenic Plants and Applications
- Viral Infections and Immunology Research
- Photosynthetic Processes and Mechanisms
- Advanced biosensing and bioanalysis techniques
- Microfluidic and Capillary Electrophoresis Applications
- Viral Infectious Diseases and Gene Expression in Insects
Northwestern University
2019-2024
Recent advances in synthetic biology have resulted biological technologies with the potential to reshape way we understand and treat human disease. Educating students about ethics underpinning these is critical empower them make informed future policy decisions regarding their use inspire next generation of biologists. However, hands-on, educational activities that convey emerging topics can be difficult implement due expensive equipment expertise required grow living cells. We present...
Training the future synthetic biology workforce requires opportunity for students to be exposed biotechnology concepts and activities in secondary education. Detecting Wolbachia bacteria arthropods using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has become a common way investigate apply recombinant DNA technology science classroom. Despite this important activity, cutting-edge biotechnologies such as clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-based diagnostics have yet widely...
As the field of synthetic biology expands, need to grow and train science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) practitioners is essential. However, lack access hands-on demonstrations has led inequalities opportunity practice. In addition, there a gap in providing content that enables students make their own bioengineered systems. To address these challenges, we develop four shelf-stable cell-free biosensing educational modules work by simply adding water DNA freeze-dried crude extracts...
Cell-free systems derived from crude cell extracts have developed into tools for gene expression, with applications in prototyping, biosensing, and protein production. Key to the development of these is optimization extract preparation methods. However, applied nature optimizations often limits investigation complex themselves, which contain thousands proteins reaction networks hundreds metabolites. Here, we sought uncover black box metabolites Escherichia coli cell-free reactions based on...
ABSTRACT Spatial organization of pathway enzymes has emerged as a promising tool to address several challenges in metabolic engineering, such flux imbalances and off-target product formation. Bacterial microcompartments (MCPs) are spatial strategy used natively by many bacteria encapsulate pathways that produce toxic, volatile intermediates. Several recent studies have focused on engineering MCPs heterologous interest, but how this affects MCP assembly function is poorly understood. In...
Spatial organization of pathway enzymes has emerged as a promising tool to address several challenges in metabolic engineering, such flux imbalances and off-target product formation. Bacterial microcompartments (MCPs) are spatial strategy used natively by many bacteria encapsulate pathways that produce toxic, volatile intermediates. Several recent studies have focused on engineering MCPs heterologous interest, but how this affects MCP assembly function is poorly understood. In study, we...
RNA-guided nucleases from CRISPR-Cas systems expand opportunities for precise, targeted genome modification. Endogenous in many prokaryotes are attractive to circumvent expression, functionality, and unintended activity hurdles posed by heterologous effectors. However, each system recognizes a unique set of protospacer adjacent motifs (PAMs), which requires identification extensive screening randomized DNA libraries. This challenge hinders development endogenous systems, especially those...
ABSTRACT Recent years have seen intense interest in the development of point-of-care nucleic acid diagnostic technologies to address scaling limitations laboratory-based approaches. Chief among these are combinations isothermal amplification approaches with CRISPR-based detection and readouts target products. Here, we contribute growing body rapid, programmable pathogen tests by developing optimizing a one-pot NASBA-Cas13a assay. This test uses technique NASBA amplify viral acids, followed...
Abstract As the field of synthetic biology expands, need to grow and train science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) practitioners is essential. However, lack access hands-on demonstrations has led inequalities opportunity practice. In addition, there a gap in providing content that enables students make their own bioengineered systems. To address these challenges, we develop four shelf-stable cell-free biosensing educational modules work by just-adding-water DNA freeze-dried crude...
Recent years have seen intense interest in the development of point-of-care nucleic acid diagnostic technologies to address scaling limitations laboratory-based approaches. Chief among these are combinations isothermal amplification approaches with CRISPR-based detection and readouts target products. Here, we contribute growing body rapid, programmable pathogen tests by developing optimizing a one-pot NASBA-Cas13a assay. This test uses technique NASBA amplify viral acids, followed...
ABSTRACT Gas fermentation by autotrophic bacteria, such as clostridia, offers a sustainable path to numerous bioproducts from range of local, highly abundant, waste and low-cost feedstocks, industrial flue gases or syngas generated biomass municipal waste. Unfortunately, designing engineering clostridia remains laborious slow. The ability prototype individual genetic parts, gene expression, biosynthetic pathway performance in vitro before implementing them cells could help address these...
large numbers of biological sequences, and improvement reference databases for prophage discovery. We targeted a Pseudomonas putida strain within lignin-degrading microbiome, but were unable to obtain active phages, turned toward defined microbiome the mouse gut.
Abstract RNA-guided nucleases from clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) systems expand opportunities for precise, targeted genome modification. Endogenous CRISPR in many bacteria and archaea are particularly attractive to circumvent expression, functionality, unintended activity hurdles posed by heterologous effectors. However, each system recognizes a unique set of PAM sequences, which requires extensive screening randomized DNA libraries. This challenge makes...
Abstract Training the future synthetic biology workforce requires opportunity and exposure to biotechnology concepts activities in secondary education. Detecting Wolbachia bacteria arthropods using PCR has become a common way for students investigate apply DNA technology science classroom. Despite this framework, cutting-edge biotechnologies like CRISPR-based diagnostics have yet be widely implemented To address gap, we present freeze-dried CRISPR-Cas12 sensing reaction complement...