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Development of New Tools for Systems Metabolic Engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
(Seminar/Conference)
Dr. Xueyang Feng, Assistant Professor
Biological Systems Engineering Department
Virginia Tech
Abstract
The potential of engineering yeast species such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae to produce drugs, biofuels, and other value-added chemicals has been explored recently in the emerging field of metabolic engineering. Despite tremendous breakthroughs in engineering yeast for biochemical production, one of the biggest challenges remaining is the complex cellular metabolism since the metabolic behaviors of yeasts are the result of coordinated regulations of genes, proteins, and metabolites. To solve this problem, systems metabolic engineering has been applied to integrate systems biology with metabolic engineering. In this talk, I will discuss our recent development of systems biology tools, including 13C Metabolic Flux Analysis (13C-MFA) and RNAseq analysis, to decode the regulation of yeast. I will also discuss our future plan of developing novel tools to gain cell-wide understanding of yeast metabolism, and illustrate how yeast can be rationally engineered from "zero-to-hero" in terms of fatty alcohol production with the insightful knowledge of metabolic regulations.
Biography
Dr. Xueyang Feng is currently working as an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Virginia Tech. Dr. Feng received his Ph.D. in 2012 from the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Before joining Virginia Tech, Dr. Feng had worked for two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Energy Biosciences Institute - Illinois at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Feng's research is related to investigation of cell metabolisms of model and non-model microorganisms via metabolic flux analysis and RNAseq analysis, as well as metabolic engineering of yeast for advanced biofuel production. Dr. Feng has identified several novel pathways, such as Re-type citrate synthase in the TCA cycle, in many environmental microorganisms and developed a web-based platform, MicrobesFlux, to enable the high-throughput and customized reconstruction of genome-scale metabolic models for environmental organisms. Dr. Feng also successfully engineered S. cerevisiae to produce fatty alcohol from renewable feedstock (e.g., xylose) through metabolic engineering of yeast lipid metabolism. Dr. Feng has published over 20 peer-reviewed papers and one book chapter in the past five years.
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(540) 231-0680