报告人：Prof. Pablo Iván Nikel       Systems Environmental Microbiology Group

The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustaniability (DTU Biosustain, Technical University of Denmark)

时间：2019年10月18日（星期五），9:00-11:00

地点：闵行校区生物药学楼5-316会议室

报告人简介：

Pablo Iván Nikel is a Senior Researcher and Group Leader at The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (DTU Biosustain, Technical University of Denmark). He has spent most of his scientific career working at the interface between Metabolic Engineering, Synthetic Biology and Chemical Biology using different bacterial hosts. He earned his Ph.D. degree at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of San Martin (Argentina), working in the design and engineering of bacterial strains for the cost-effective production of polyhydroxyalkanoates and biofuels. Under the supervision of Prof. George Bennett and Prof. Ka-Yiu San at Rice University (USA), he worked in developing novel technologies for quantitative microbial physiology using ¹³C-labeled substrates. Supported by EMBO and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Dr. Nikel then joined the research team of Prof. Víctor de Lorenzo (Spain) as a post-doctoral associate to explore new frontiers in Metabolic Engineering of alternative bacterial platforms. Over the last years, his interests focused on the rational engineering of environmental bacteria (especially Pseudomonas putida) for bespoke biocatalysis and energy-efficient bioprocesses. Presently, Dr. Nikel heads the Systems Environmental Microbiology group at DTU Biosustain, where he continues to pursue the longstanding goal of engineering superior biocatalysts by expanding the catalytic properties of environmental bacteria towards uncharted chemical landscapes.

报告摘要：

The bacterial platform Pseudomonas putida is the microbial host of choice for practical applications that require high resistance to different types of stress. Additionally, this bacterium displays a remarkable metabolic versatility that forms the basis for implementing complex metabolic engineering approaches. In this lecture, I will discuss the built-in properties that position P. putida as a suitable cell factory for a number of industrial applications, and how contemporary synthetic biology can be used to further engineer these core features towards specific tasks (e.g. efficient consumption of alternative carbon substrates). Along this line, a major promise of using this bacterial species as a production platform resides in the possibility of assembling synthetic, artificial biochemical routes (i.e. neo-metabolism) towards the synthesis of complex, new-to-Nature molecules. Extending the rich native biochemistry beyond the existing boundaries of traditional bioproduction has the potential to transform current production pipelines―a possibility which will be illustrated through the engineering of targeted halogenations for the synthesis of pharmaceutical synthons.