We also characterize cell morphology within ELMs using confocal microscopy and microCT imaging to see our yeast cells 'living' within these hydrated scaffolds.

We’re excited to announce our most recent graduate: 🎊🥳🎉 Dr Kevin Reed! 🎉🥳🎊 He will be working in management consulting at Bain, right here in Austin 🕴

First author, Hongyuan, supplied the plastic samples for degradation himself, saying “the plastic is for the microbes, and the food is for me”. See the degradation of 51 post-consumer plastic products in this figure from the paper published in @Nature

Amino acid substitutions to achieve this enzymatic activity were identified via a 3D self-supervised deep learning network, MutCompute.

Via machine learning-informed enzyme evolution, we designed an enzyme capable of degrading post-consumer PET from 51 different plastic products in as little as 24 hours under moderate conditions.  #pollution #synbio #Engineering Check out this time-lapse of plastic degradation:

See one of our own, Sarah Coleman, and fellow UT ChemE grad student, Miriam Balogun from the Brennecke lab, at the AICHE @ChEnected student recruitment fair in Boston! Meet some great #womeninSTEM and chat with them about our wonderful program! @TexasChE @CockrellSchool

More exciting news! Congratulations Dr. Simon d'Oelsnitz on successfully defending his thesis! His work on developing transcription factor-based biosensors will be continued as he works in the Ellington lab as a post-doc!

We have some big news! Congratulations, Dr. Claire Palmer (@czmarie6) on successfully defending her thesis leveraging Yarrowia lipolytica as a host for type III polyketide synthesis! She’ll be going to U W-Madison for a post doc with the Venturelli lab (@oventurelli2)! 🎉 🥼 🎉

Sierra’s poster rounds out our submissions to #MetabolicEngineering14! Her work on out-of-the lab applications of metabolic engineering can be used for on-demand production of proteins and small molecules in the field (Think SPACE!). Come chat with her! (Poster Group 1, 31)

Emily’s poster focuses on the development of a generalizable microfluidic platform for sorting large microbial libraries for improved production/secretion of small molecules! Come by and ask about this mix-and-match platform (Poster Group 1, 25)

Xiu’s now up! His work uses CRISPR to re-wire metabolism in different strains of S. cerevisiae to show when metabolic differences can be utilized for improved metabolite production! Every yeast is unique! Come ask Xiu about his research(Poster Group 1, 32) #MetabolicEngineering14

Joseph is up next, who's work on microbial consortia in hydrogels resulted in steady production of multiple products over time compared to traditional co-cultures! Come by and ask him about strain engineering and hydrogels (Poster Group 2, 57) #MetabolicEngineering14

Kristin is our next feature! Her poster will focus on work she’s done developing Boolean circuits in S. Cerevisiae using CRISPR! Come by to say hi and/or ask her about her research (Poster Group 3, 84) #MetabolicEngineering14