Jay Keasling, one of the foremost authorities in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, will present a lecture and meet with faculty and students on Wednesday, Oct. 24 at the Nebraska Union Colonial Rooms A and B. Students and faculty are invited to attend.
The event, titled “Engineering Microorganisms for Production of Isoprenoid Natural Products & Some Not-So-Natural Products” is presented by the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, begins with the 8:30 a.m. lecture and is followed at 9:30 a.m. with an interactive session.
Keasling, a 1986 Nebraska chemical engineering graduate and a native of Harvard, Nebraska, is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also associate laboratory director for biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Labroatory and is CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute.
His research is focused on engineering the chemistry inside microorganisms, a field known as metabolic engineering, for the production of useful chemicals or for environmental cleanup. These chemicals and biofuels, which come from renewable resources, are produced in much the same way they have been produced from fossil fuel resources.
Keasling’s laboratory has applied metabolic chemistry to a number of real-world problems including the production of the antimalarial drug artemisinin and drop-in biofuels.