Principal Investigator Kristala Prather
Biological systems have the potential to produce a wide array of compounds with uses that include fuels, materials, bulk chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. The potential for biological conversion of feedstocks to bulk chemicals is enhanced by the availability of tools and techniques from the established discipline of Metabolic Engineering, which has enjoyed tremendous successes in the development of highly productive microorganisms for a variety of products of interest. We can also gain insights from Biocatalysis, where the choice of enzymes to mediate biotransformation of chemical substrates is based largely on consideration of the required functional group conversion without being limited by prior evidence of transformation of the full structure. Our group is focused on applying principles from each of these intellectual arenas towards the design and construction of novel biosynthetic pathways for specified target compounds, with the ultimate goal of increasing the synthetic capacity of biological systems. This “retro-biosynthetic design” approach is aided by advancements in the development of new tools under the umbrella of Synthetic Biology that facilitate re-engineering of biological systems. We take a largely experimental approach to develop the described retro-biosynthetic framework for de novo proposition of biosynthetic pathways. We select molecules of interest, propose potential synthetic pathways, and begin construction of engineered microbial chemical factories.