BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Memento EPFL// BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Engineering the Isoprenoid Pathway in Bacteria and Yeasts DTSTART:20190527T121500 DTSTAMP:20260509T103409Z UID:9ce3e9fa2a0a857e8eb00f86cf2897e027430cb527a8fc59b5355ddb CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars DESCRIPTION:Prof. Greg Stephanopoulos\, Department of Chemical Engineeri ng\, Massachusetts Institute of Technology\, Cambridge\, MA (USA)\nJOINT CHEMICAL and BIOENGINEERING SEMINAR\n(sandwiches served)\n\nAbstract:\nIso prenoids are a large class of\, mainly plant-derived\, natural compounds. Also known as terpenoids. They comprise more than 55\,000 compounds and co nstitute one of the largest classes of metabolites in nature. Their import ance stems from their diverse uses in fields like nutrition\, cosmetics an d medicine\, with some of these compounds\, such as taxol and artemisinin\ , currently being used as pharmaceuticals for the treatment of cancer and malaria\, respectively. Numerous other compounds are under investigation f or other applications. Despite strong interest in these molecules\, curren t methods of production rely on extraction from plant sources\, which are inefficient\, unreliable and costly. As a result\, effective drugs cannot be deployed at scale especially in developing countries. In recent years  microbial metabolic engineering has made great advances in facilitating t he biosynthesis of isoprenoids. In this talk\, I will outline general prin ciples of metabolic engineering for isoprenoid production inEscherichia co li and the oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica  that yielded record l evels of taxadiene accumulation. A new pathway bypassing central carbon me tabolism will be described along with methods to overcome the hydrophobic nature of these compounds which prevents their intracellular accumulation to very high levels. Due\, in part\, to these advances\, a pipeline of iso preboid products has been constructed for their cost effective production by microbial fermentation.\n \n \nBio:\nGregory N. Stephanopoulos was t he 2016 AIChE President and the W. H. Dow Professor of Chemical Engineerin g at MIT. After obtaining his chemical engineering doctorate at Univ. of M innesota\, he taught at Caltech before joining MIT in 1985. His research f ocuses on metabolic engineering — the engineering of microbes to convert them to chemical factories for the production of fuels and chemicals. He has co-authored or edited five books\, 380 papers\, and 50 patents\, and s upervised more than 110 graduate students and post-docs. He is editor-in-c hief of two journals\, and serves on the editorial boards of seven scienti fic journals and the advisory boards of five chemical engineering departm ents. Among his 15 major awards are AIChE’s Food\, Pharmaceutical\, and Bioengineering (FPBE) Div. Award\, Wilhelm Award\, and Founders Award. In 2002 he was elected to AIChE’s Board of Directors. He is an AIChE Fellow and Trustee of the AIChE Foundation. He is also a Member of the National Academy of Engineering and Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens.\ n  LOCATION:SV 1717 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SV%201717 STATUS:CONFIRMED END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR