Renewable Energy from Synthetic Biology
| Category | Online Presentations |
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| Abstract | Jay Keasling, Co-Leader of The Helios Project, is the Director of the Physical Biosciences Division at Berkeley Lab, and a groundbreaking researcher in the new scientific field of synthetic biology. He is a UC Berkeley professor of Chemical and Bioengineering, and founder of Amyris Biotechnologies, a company that was honored as a Technology Pioneer for 2006 by the World Economic Forum. Jay has succeeded in using synthetic biology to develop a yeast-based production scheme for precursors of the antimalarial drug artemisinin in work funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In Helios, Jay heads the biology program, incorporating a range of approaches to increasing the efficacy and economy of plants and cellulose-degrading microbes to make solar-based fuels. |
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| Bio | 
Dr. Jay Keasling is truly a pioneer in the field of synthetic biology - engineering microorganisms that contain many genes designed to work together. Keasling's work in synthetic biology includes engineering of microbes to produce treatments for malaria, AIDS, and cancer as well as plastics and new fuel resources.
Discover magazine recently named Keasling 2006 Scientist of the Year, selecting his breakthroughs over the work of others that, for instance, redefined the term "planet," showed how early life moved onto land, and bolstered the case for global warming. As director of the Berkeley Center for Synthetic Biology, Dr. Keasling's research seeks to expand the biotechnology process from expressing single proteins within cells to recreating complex chemical processes within engineered organisms. "That's how we treat the cell in my lab: It's a chemical reactor. It takes in something very simple and spits out something complicated and valuable," he told Discover. Keasling's laboratory has integrated genes from different species into bacteria that clean up toxic wastes, such as heavy metals and organophosphate pesticides. Early in 2006, Keasling engineered a yeast containing bacterial and wormwood genes into a chemical factory to produce a precursor to artemisinin, the most effective and expensive anti-malarial drug. Since artemisinin is a hydrocarbon, this work has led him into study of the production of biofuels. Jay Keasling received his B.S. in Chemistry and Biology from the University of Nebraska in 1986 and his Ph. D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1991. He did post-doctoral work in Biochemistry at Stanford University from 1991-1992. Keasling joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley as an assistant professor in 1992, where he remains a renowned professor. |
| Credits | The Helios Talks at Berkeley Rep |
| Sponsored by | Berkeley Lab Friends of Science UC Berkeley Chabot Space and Science Center The Exploratorium Berkeley High School Albany High School Oakland Unified School District Berkeley Repertory Theater |
| Cite this work | Researchers should cite this work as follows: |
| Time | June 04, 2007 |
| Location | Berkeley Repertory Theater, Berkeley, CA |
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