Time：Wednesday 2:00 PM, May 25, 2016
Location：Conference room in Biotechnology Building
Dr. Li-Shan ZHAO
Amyris, Inc., USA
Abstract: At Amyris, we have used the native central metabolic pathway of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to generate acetyl-CoA, the precursor for isoprenoid biosynthesis, and a heterologous farnesene synthase to produce farnesene at industrial scale from plant-derived feedstocks. E-β-Farnesene is a commercially valuable isoprenoid molecule. As a versatile synthetic building block, its numerous derivatives can be used in a wide variety of applications ranging from fuels to novel performance materials. The native pathway-based route to farnesene, however, suffers from an imbalance of pathway metabolites and cofactors, translating to high energetic costs to the cell and overall higher production costs. We therefore designed and constructed an alternative central metabolic pathway in S. cerevisiae which reduces the cost of converting glucose to farnesene and all other isoprenoids. This synthetic pathway divides glucose dissimilation between parallel heterologous routes and alters the cofactor requirements of isoprenoid biosynthesis, resulting in an improved internal pathway balance and increased carbon flux to farnesene. In this presentation, I will highlight how we rewired the yeast metabolic network and created an engineered strain with higher theoretical yield and improved productivity, enabling microbial production of farnesene and other isoprenoids at commercial scale with significantly reduced cost.
About the Speaker: Dr. Lishan ZHAO, Leader of enzymology and protein engineering at Amyris, Inc. He obtained BSc from Fudan University, PhD from University of Minnesota, USA (2000) in Prof. Hung-wen Liu’s laboratory. Over the past 8 years, he led multidisciplinary groups to develop engineered yeast strains to produce artemisinic acid, the precursor for artemisinin (青蒿素), and scaled up its manufacturing. That ensured one of the landmark successes in the synthetic biology field, i.e., commercialization of semi-synthetic artemisinin. He has filed over 40 patents and published over 30 papers on prestigious journals including Nature, PNAS, Angew. Chem. and JACS.
Contact: Prof. Zongbao K. Zhao