Introducing Our Authors Cite This: ACS Synth. Biol. 2017, 6, 1797-1799
■
YADIRA BOADA
Education. Doctorate, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf; M.Sc. and B.Sc. (Biochemistry), Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. Current Position. Group leader of enzymology in the Institute for Bioorganic Chemistry and independent team leader of the Secondary-Metabolism-Enzymology group at Forschungszentrum Jülich. Nonscientific Interests. Cooking, science fiction novels, wood crafting Secondary metabolism excites by its sheer diversity and is a cornucopia of fascinating enzymes. The involved biocatalysts producing these beautiful and cherished structures are attractive to synthetic chemistry by means of selectivity, but also because so many variants have been evolved. My group aims at identifying unknown enzyme activities, studying their mechanism, and ultimately employing them as selective and sustainable catalysts in fine chemical syntheses. The present paper highlights what is possible if chemists and biologists combine their very individual strengths. On the one hand the biologists created a metabolic machinery producing prodigiosin or parts of it much easier than what would be possible chemically. On the other hand the chemists were able to create many derivatives of the biological building block. The interdisciplinary cooperation paid off since a promising pharmacological activity was foundand this is fun. (Read Classen’s article DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.7b00099).
Alejandro Vignoni
Education. Master degree in Automatic Control and Industrial Computing at Universitat Politècnica de València (2013), Electronic Engineering degree (2010) at Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Quito, Ecuador. Current Position. Ph.D. candidate, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain, under the supervision of Prof. Jesús Picó. Nonscientific Interests. Traveling, cooking, textile sewing and artistic painting. My current research focuses on methodologies for design and optimal tuning of feedback control gene synthetic networks with application in the biotechnology industry. I use concepts and methodologies drawn from system dynamics and feedback control, simulation of stochastic systems and multiobjective optimization. I have a background in engineering, but to validate my in silico designs, I learned to implement them in bacteria. In our paper, we propose a gene network designed to control the mean and variance of gene expression in a population of cells. The circuit combines an intracellular negative feedback loop and quorum sensing system. Our stochastic simulations reveal significant noise attenuation in gene expression through the interplay between quorum sensing and negative feedback. (Read Boada’s article; DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.7b00087).
■
pubs.acs.org/synthbio
■
DREW DELORENZO
THOMAS CLASSEN
Greg DeLorenzo
Education. M.Eng., Washington University in St. Louis; B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of South Carolina; B.S. in Marine Science, University of South Carolina. Current Position. Ph.D. Candidate in Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, Advisor: Prof. Tae Seok Moon. Nonscientific Interests. Photography, book collecting, theater, travel, cooking. Received: October 8, 2017 Published: October 20, 2017
Thomas Classen
© 2017 American Chemical Society
1797
DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.7b00358 ACS Synth. Biol. 2017, 6, 1797−1799
ACS Synthetic Biology
■
The conversion of biomass, particularly lignin, into renewable, biobased fuels and chemicals requires a microbial host that possesses certain desirable characteristics. My research focuses on the nonmodel bacterium Rhodococcus opacus PD630, which exhibits high tolerance to toxic lignin-derived aromatic compounds and a high-flux consumption pathway to convert these compounds into lipids or other value-added compounds. As a nonmodel organism, few molecular tools or parts have been developed and characterized in R. opacus. The present work focuses on the development of chemically inducible promoters and several classes of metabolite sensors for R. opacus. My future research topics include the development of additional molecular tools and their eventual application toward metabolic engineering in R. opacus. (Read DeLorenzo’s article: DOI: 10.1021/ acssynbio.7b00192).
■
Introducing Our Authors
ANITA LOESCHCKE
Anita Loeschcke
Education. Doctorate, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf; Diploma (Biology), University of Cologne. Current Position. Leader of Junior Research Group bioactive natural products in the Institute for Enzyme Technology, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf and Coordinator of the German interdisciplinary CombiCom research consortium. Nonscientific Interests. Mountain biking; gardening; Italian crime fiction; cooking and food. I am passionate about bacteria that have developed intricate biosynthetic pathways leading to secondary metabolites with diverse and often useful bioactivities. Therefore, my group aims at the development of tools enabling the heterologous expression of biosynthetic gene clusters in microbial hosts for the production and analysis of such valuable compounds. Our paper is the result of an exciting interdisciplinary collaboration between biologists and chemists, which allowed us to exploit a secondary metabolite pathway delivering the pharmaceutically active natural compound prodigiosin, and, furthermore, led us to explore also the chemical space of nature-inspired synthetic compounds beyond. (Read Loeschcke’s article DOI: 10.1021/ acssynbio.7b00099).
́ JUAN ANTONIO GARCIA
Juan Antonio Garciá
Education. M.S. in Biochemistry, and M.S. in Pharmacy, Complutense University of Madrid; Ph.D. from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain. Current Position. Research Professor, Centro Nacional de Biotecnologiá (CNB-CSIC), Madrid, Spain. Nonscientific Interests. Playing chess and mushroom hunting are my hobbies; I’m a fan of the Aviador Dro, and Las VulpeSS bands. Juan Antonio Garciá studied Biochemistry and Pharmacy at the Complutense University of Madrid. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1982 on the assembly of the tail of bacteriophage ø29 at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He performed postdoctoral research for two years in the Department of Molecular Biology of the University of Wageningen (The Netherlands), where he initiated his research on plant viruses. On 1986, he started a research line on the molecular biology of the potyvirus Plum pox virus in the Centro de Biologia Molecular of Madrid. This research line was continued in 1993 in the Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia of Madrid. In 1992 he became Research Professor of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC). His main interests of research are to understand plant-virus interactions contributing to virus pathogenicity, and to develop novel strategies to interfere with viral infections. He is also interested in the development of expression systems based on plant viruses. He is author of over 150 scientific publications. (Read Garcia’s article DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.6b00354).
■
PETER Q. NGUYEN
Peter Q. Nguyen
Education. Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Ph.D., Rice University; M.B.S., Keck Graduate Institute of the Claremont Colleges; B.A., B.S., University of Texas. Current Position. Technology Development Fellow, Wyss Institute of Biological Inspired Engineering, Harvard University. 1798
DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.7b00358 ACS Synth. Biol. 2017, 6, 1797−1799
ACS Synthetic Biology
■
Nonscientific Interests. Fishing, painting, camping, automotive repair, and spiders. Imagine harnessing the self-amplifying and autonomous nature of biological systems toward engineering large-scale living materials that can perform complex functional tasks. In our current work, we have created a biofilm that generates mercury-absorbing biopolymers only when it detects the presence of mercury. We envision future iterations of this technology to produce sentinel populations of bacteria that can sense heavy metal toxins in the soil, and then generate the appropriate extracellular biopolymer to soak up the toxins. This living “toxin sponge” platform could beneficially shift the flow of these toxins from entering surrounding food chains, to minimize the impact on the local environment and human populations. (Read Nguyen’s article DOI: 10.1021/ acssynbio.7b00137).
■
Introducing Our Authors
ALEJANDRO VIGNONI
Alejando Vignoni
Education. Ph.D. in Control Engineering, Robotics and Industrial Informatics (2014), Universitat Politècnica de Valèn cia, Spain; Electronic Engineering degree (2008), Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. Postdoctoral Fellow (2015−2017), Centre for Systems Biology Dresden and Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden; Postdoctoral Researcher (2014−2015), Synthetic Biology and Biosystems Control Lab, Institute ai2, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain. Current Position. Assistant Lecturer and Researcher at Dept. of Systems Engineering and Control, Universitat Politècnica de València. Nonscientific Interests. Traveling, biking, yoga and photography. The main question underpinning my research is how interactions among different levels of hierarchical organizations allow us to reveal emergent behaviors in complex systems, especially biological ones. I develop new algorithms and methodologies to design synthetic gene circuits for biotechnology by applying systems dynamics, feedback control and sliding modes theory to model, simulate, and control biological systems. In our paper, we present the interplay between quorum sensing feedback regulation and biochemical noise in an engineered control of genetic variability. We find conditions for the promoters and the circuit parameters in general that allow for noise attenuation. The paper also lays out that multiobjective optimization is the way to go for designing genetic circuits to control or exploit variability in gene expression. (Read Vignoni’s article; DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.7b00087).
FABIO PASIN
Karolina Zajac
Education. M.S. in Agricultural Science, University of Padua, Padua, Italy; Ph.D. in Molecular Biosciences, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, Advisors: Carmen SimónMateo and Juan Antonio Garciá (CNB-CSIC). Current Position. Postdoctoral fellow, Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. Nonscientific Interests. Whenever possible, I enjoy a glass of Torcolato wine. Pathogens have significant economic and agronomic impacts on many crops. My current research seeks to combine synthetic biology principles and -omics approaches to improve plant immunity. Engineering of complex plant traits relies on multigene transfer. In our study, we present pLX vectors, a series of binary vectors based on compatible broad-host replication origins. Our vectors ease multigene construct assembly and multiple T-DNA delivery to plants. To summarize, we show that there is room for improvement of standard plant transformation technologies; if you are interested in using our vectors, feel free to contact me! (Read Pasin’s article DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.6b00354). 1799
DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.7b00358 ACS Synth. Biol. 2017, 6, 1797−1799
