The Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department invites you to a seminar by:
Dr. Matthew P. DeLisa
William L. Lewis Professor
School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Cornell University
Synthetic glycobiology: designing and engineering glycomolecules inside and outside of cells
Complex carbohydrates, or glycans, are involved in almost every human disease and biological process. Hence, the field of glycoscience has the potential to broadly impact society in areas as diverse as medicine, energy, and materials. In the last decade, an entirely new discipline called bacterial glycoengineering has made it possible to produce designer glycans on demand, some containing unnatural sugars, and to evolve enzymes, pathways, and host organisms that catalyze prescribed glycosylation reactions. In addition to their biotechnological potential, bacteria equipped with recombinant glycosylation pathways hold promise to improve our fundamental understanding of the glycosylation process. To overcome the complexity of cell-based processes and our inability to control glycosylation components at precise ratios, we have focused on the seamless integration of experimental and computational approaches to develop and optimize a first-of-its-kind cell-free glycoprotein synthesis system that permits biosynthesis and conjugation of customized glycans to target proteins of interest both in one-pot reaction vessels and microfluidic architectures. This talk will cover some of our recent progress towards the purposeful alteration and rational construction of diverse glycosylation systems in both living cells and cell-free reaction environments. By leveraging chemical and molecular biological approaches in conjunction with metabolic engineering and synthetic biology tools, our glycoengineering work has been instrumental in increasing our understanding of glycosylation networks and producing desired glycans and glycoconjugates.
Biography: Matthew P. DeLisa is the William L. Lewis Professor of Engineering in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. His research focuses on understanding and controlling the molecular mechanisms underlying protein biogenesis -- folding and assembly, membrane translocation and post-translational modifications -- in the complex environment of a living cell. Professor DeLisa received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Connecticut in 1996; a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2001; and did postdoctoral work at the University of Texas-Austin, Department of Chemical Engineering. DeLisa joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University in 2003. He has also served as a Gastprofessur at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) in the Institut für Mikrobiologie. He has garnered a number of honors and awards including most recently the Biotechnology Progress Award for Excellence in Biological Engineering Publication and was named the to the inaugural “Life Sciences Power 50” by City & State New York. He is an elected fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in recent years has served on the IDA/DARPA Defense Science Study Group and the National Academies Committee on Innovative Technologies to Advance Pharmaceutical Manufacturing.
Thursday, March 9, 2023
9:30 a.m., Gant North (GN) 20
Livestream link: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/lqwur
For more information, contact: Katie O'Keefe at (860) 486-4020/katie.okeefe@uconn.edu