Jennifer Reed

Title: Associate Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering and Harvey D. Spangler Faculty Scholar
Office: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Synthesizing Precursors to Commercial Chemicals

Abstract: Microbes have been engineered to produce a variety of chemicals, including biofuels, commodity chemicals, and therapeutics. Production can be enhanced by connecting biosynthesis pathways to host metabolism and optimizing the pathway's expression. However, another important step in engineering microbes to produce desired chemicals is to increase production of their chemical precursors. In this work, we evaluated what precursors are needed to synthesize a variety of chemicals, and then designed and engineered strains to produce one of these precursors—pyruvate. Examples will be presented showing how computational models can be used to prioritize precursor-based strategies and identify genetic modifications to enhance precursor production. Current efforts are focused on engineering the pyruvate production strains to produce other native and non-native products, as well as developing other precursor production strains.

Jennifer Reed, Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at UW-Madison and Harvey D. Spangler Faculty Scholar in the College of Engineering, received her BS and PhD in Bioengineering at UC San Diego. She has received the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the DOE Early Career Award, and the NSF CAREER Award. She is also Ed Lightfoot's 'academic granddaughter': her advisor, Bernhard Palsson, was one of Ed's students. Reed can surf (not surprising after 11 years in San Diego), enjoys waterskiing and wake boarding, and has two viszlas that are good running companions.