Shao, Zengyi - IOWA State University - Chemical and Biological Engineering

个人简介

Education Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2009 M.S. Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2005 B.S. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Nankai University, China, 2002

研究领域

Biorenewables Synthetic Biology The advent of synthetic biology has revolutionized our ability to discover and construct new biosynthetic pathways and engineer platform organisms, or so-called microbial factories, to produce a wide variety of value-added products. Our laboratory focuses on engineering individual microorganisms as well as microbial consortia to address critical issues in energy sustainability and chemical production. Engineering Non-Conventional Yeasts: We are interested in exploring the potential of non-conventional yeast strains based on their special features that S. cerevisiae does not possess. For example, we study the transcriptomics and metabolomics of Scheffersomyces stipitis to understand its cellular metabolism regarding its high capacity of pentose utilization; we use the superior acid tolerance of Issatchenkia orientalis to create a superbug for producing short chain dicarboxylic acid, the important precursors in industry for synthesizing polymers, surfactants, lubricants and biofuels. Exploring Microbial Consortia: Microbial consortia, composed of multiple interacting microbial populations, can carry out complicated tasks that are more difficult or even impossible for individual populations to perform. The existence of such cooperation and division of labor are common in nature, where organisms establish mutual relationship. We can easily find such examples e.g. between bacteria for anaerobic methane oxidation, between plants and bacteria for global nitrogen fixation, and in higher animals where gut microbes facilitate food utilization and metabolite transfer. Here we exploit a genetically engineered microbial consortium of multiple yeast strains to address the issue of mixed sugar utilization in lignocellulosic hydrolysates. Developing Strategies for High-Throughput Strain Optimization: We are interested in designing various protein, pathway and genome engineering strategies to systematically optimize strain performance. One example project is to develop a high-throughput sensing platform to report fatty acid product profiles. Fatty acid synthesis naturally occurs via six recurring reactions with two more carbons added in each cycle. Nowadays, production of fatty acids can easily be achieved through expressing the corresponding biosynthetic pathway in genetically trackable organisms. The challenge is how to produce a relatively pure fatty acid with a defined chain length. The product of natural fatty acid synthesis is usually a mixture of compounds with different chain lengths because the “gatekeeper” thioesterase (TE) hydrolyzes thioester bond promiscuously. In order to identify highly specific TEs to produce “pure” fatty acids, we engineer a series of transcriptional regulators responsive to fatty acids with defined chain lengths, as a high-throughput sensing platform, to report product profiles for the large library of TE variants.

近期论文

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Suastegui*, J. E. Matthiesen*, J. M. Carraher, N. Hernandez, N. R. Quiroz, A. Okerlund, E. W. Cochran, Z. Shao†, and J.-P. Tessonnier†, “Combining Metabolic Engineering and Electrocatalysis: Application to the Production of Polyamides from Sugar”, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 55, 2368-2373, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201509653 (2016, the front cover). Zhao*, Y. Huang*, M. Cao, J. F. McClelland, Z. Shao, and M. Lu†, "Photoacoustic Immunoassay Using Plasmonic Nanoparticles for Protein Analysis", Biosensors and Bioelectronics, 85, 261-266, DOI: 10.1016/j.bios.2016.05.028 (2016). Suastegui, W. Guo, X. Feng†, and Z. Shao†, “Investigating Strain Dependency in the Production of Aromatic Compounds in Saccharomyces cerevisiae”, Biotechnology and Bioengineering, 113(12), 2676-2685, DOI: 10.1002/bit.26037 (2016). Suastegui and Z. Shao†, “Yeast Factories for Production of Aromatic Compounds: from Building Blocks to Plant Secondary Metabolites”, Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology, 43(11), 611-1624, DOI: 10.1007/s10295-016-1824-9 (2016). Gao, M. Cao, M. Suastegui, J. Walker, N. R. Quiroz, Y. Wu, D. Tribby, A. Okerlund, L. Stanley, J. V. Shanks and Z. Shao†, “Innovating a Nonconventional Yeast Platform for Producing Shikimic Acid as the Building Block of High-value Aromatics”, ACS Synthetic Biology, DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.6b00132 (2016). Matthiesen, M. Suastegui, Y. Wu, M. Viswanathan, Y. Qu, M. Cao, N. Rodriguez-Quiroz, A. Okerlund, G. Kraus, R. Raman, Z. Shao, and J.-P.Tessonnier†, “Electrochemical Conversion of Biologically-Produced Muconic Acid: Key Considerations for Scale-up and Corresponding Technoeconomic Analysis”, ACS Sustainable Chemical Engineering, 4 (12), 7098–7109, DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.6b01981 (2016). Suastegui, M. Gao, and Z. Shao†, “Pathway Assembly and Optimization”, Biotechnologies for Biofuel Production and Optimization, 1st Edition, Elsevier, 139-164 (2016). Zhao, Z. Shao, and J. V. Shanks†, “Chapter 8 Anti-cancer Drugs”, Industrial Biotechnology: Products and Processes, Wiley-VCH, volume 4, 239-270 (2016).