Yujie Men

Assistant Professor, Chemical and Environmental Engineering
University of Minnesota

Multi-Omics Investigation of Carbon Flux Networks in Environmental Bacteria of Biotechnological Relevance

Carbon-fluorine (C–F) bond is the strongest single bond in nature. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a large group of man-made chemicals with broad applications causing severe environmental concerns due to their persistence and toxicity.

Although microbial defluorination of naturally occurring and less fluorinated compounds, such as monofluoroacetate, has been well studied, biodefluorination pathways and mechanisms of highly fluorinated PFAS have not been clearly understood.

An introduction of the current research status of microbial defluorination will be
given first, followed by the most recent findings on microbial defluorination of a variety of per- and polyfluorinated compounds, defluorination pathway elucidation, and the identification of responsible microorganisms.

THURSDAY  I  OCT. 13 I  3:30-4:30 PM CST  I  HYBRID SEMINAR