Adamala Lab

Assistant Professor, Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development
University of Minnesota

Life but not alive: bioengineering with synthetic cells

All of biological research is done on a single sample: that of modern, terrestrial life. In the quest to engineer synthetic living systems, we seek to expand that sample size, enabling investigation to general properties of life in the lineage agnostic, synthetic organisms.

Synthetic minimal cells are liposomal bioreactors that have some, but not all properties of live cells. Creating artificial living systems allows us to diversify the chassis of biological studies, and provides new opportunities for bioengineering.

We can answer questions about healthy and diseased natural cells, and ask new questions about the limits and possibilities of biology.

THURSDAY  I  OCT. 6 I  3:30-4:30 PM CST  I  HYBRID SEMINAR

Art Edison

University of Georgia

Unique strengths of NMR metabalomics: In vivo metabolism & improved compound identification

Metabolomics is an important component of systems biology research in biology and biomedicine. Two major technologies are widely used in metabolomics research, mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses. Recently, LC-MS has gained in popularity, thanks largely to its high sensitivity and ability to detect 10s of thousands of features.

In this talk, I will highlight some of the unique strengths of NMR metabolomics, most notably approaches to study metabolic dynamics in real-time in cells or microorganisms. I will also discuss the difficulty that the entire field faces in confident metabolite identification and will present recent approaches to better combine NMR with LC-MS and computational chemistry to improve compound identification.

THURSDAY  I  SEPT. 29 I  3:30-4:30 PM CST  I  HYBRID SEMINAR

Sean Elliot

Boston University

Redox Enzymes of Carbon Transformation, through an electrochemical lens

This seminar will use iron-sulfur cluster proteins and enzymes as examples to illustrate how a far-ranging series of redox-active metalloproteins can be examined through an electrochemical lens, to understand the role that specific redox couples play in complex enzymatic mechanisms and biological pathways. The main focus will be the impact and interplay of ferredoxin — small, ubiquitous iron-sulfur cluster redox relays — upon the function of members of the oxo-acid:ferredoxin oxidoreductase (OFOR) enzyme superfamily will be discussed. OFORs are essential players in the carbon cycle, and are considered to be reversible enzymes. However, like hydrogenases and other reversible enzymes, the design features that nature has employed to modulate the ‘bias’ of reactive toward either oxidation or reduction is unclear. And, like hydrogenases, understanding the redox couples of OFORs has proven challenging historically. Here, a combination of electrochemical and spectroscopic studies will be presented as a series of OFOR enzymes from varying biological sources and pathways will be compared and contrasted.

THURSDAY  I  SEPT. 22 I  3:30-4:30 PM CST  I  HYBRID SEMINAR

Ludmilla Aristilde

Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering and (by courtesy) Chemical and Biological Engineering
Faculty Fellow, Center for Synthetic Biology
University of Minnesota

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

Biological conversion of organic wastes into valuable products represents an important component of a sustainable energy portfolio towards decreasing our reliance on petroleum-based chemical production. Critical to this effort is a fundamental understanding of the metabolic networks that control carbon utilization by environmental bacteria, which provide an array of potential biological platforms to develop new chassis for biotechnological targets.

Dr Aristilde and her team has developed ¹³C-metabolomics approaches coupled with other omics techniques to unravel the metabolic flux networks in bacterial species isolated from soils, plant roots, and wastewater streams. We combine high-resolution fingerprinting of metabolites and metabolic reactions with genome-based predictions, proteomics analyses, and fluxomics modeling.

This walk will present multi-omics investigations to obtain new insights on the metabolic mechanisms underlying carbon flux routing in Pseudomonas putida, Priestia megaterium (formerly known as Bacillus megaterium), and Comamonas testosteroni. Guiding principles to identify target pathway candidates for metabolic engineering will also be highlighted.

THURSDAY  I  SEPT. 15 I  3:30-4:30 PM CST  I  HYBRID SEMINAR

Ben Shen

Scripps

Leveraging a large microbial strain collection for natural products studies

Scripps Florida houses one of the world’s largest actinobacterial strain collections, totaling >125,00 strains. These strains were isolated over the last eight decades and from 69 different countries, spanning at least 88 different genera. A natural products library (NPL) has also been constructed, consisting of 46,031 crude extracts, 28,739 partially purified fractions, and 650 pure NPs, which were made from 14,635 actinobacterial strains.

Current effort has been focused on sequencing the strain collection to establish the Natural Products Genomics Resource Center (NPGRC) for the broad scientific community.

Selected studies will be presented to highlight how to leverage the strain collection, the NPL, the NPGRC database, and the associated enabling technologies to transform the current paradigms of microbial natural product discovery and how to exploit this unique natural products resource to target emerging biology and accelerate drug discovery.

THURSDAY  I  APR. 28  I  3:30-4:30 PM CST  I  HYBRID SEMINAR