Seminar: "Rapid pathway prototyping for novel bio-based chemicals: Ginkgo case studies"

Target Audience: Researchers, Graduate Students and anyone who is interested in synthetic biology

Session format: Seminar followed by Q&A

*Buffett style food will be provided*

Speaker: Dr. Massimo Merighi, Associate head of metabolic engineering, Ginkgo Bioworks, Boston, MA, USA

Description:

Rapid prototyping of novel metabolic pathways for bio-based chemicals is often a requirement for proof of concept, appropriate project derisking, and ultimately for more accurate program costing. The process requirements are to explore an as granular and possible metabolic space, both in term of enzyme diversity and expression levels, in a short period of time, and containing cost. The Ginkgo Bioworks foundry, combining highly automated synthetic biology unit operations with high-throughput analytics controlled by custom scheduling software, is ideally suited for massively parallel approaches that can significantly reduce the time required for pathway prototyping.

Company Profile: 

Ginkgo Bioworks was founded in 2009 by 4 MIT graduate students and their PI. The company aims to bring industrial efficiency to biology by designing and engineering microorganisms as production factories of useful ingredients for perfumes, foods, cosmetics, enzymes, and more. In the last 10 years, the company has raised more than $400M from investors, including Bill Gates, and has partnered with leading companies worldwide, such as Ajinomoto, Bayer, and Genomatica.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Massimo Merighi is associate head of metabolic engineering at Ginkgo Bioworks (Boston, MA, USA). Before joining Ginkgo, he worked at Glycosyn (Woburn, MA, USA) on the metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli to produce human milk oligosaccharides (HMO). An organism he engineered capable of 2' fucosyllactose biosynthesis has reached production scale and commercialization as a food ingredient for baby formula by a major manufacturer. Dr. Merighi trained at Harvard University (Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics) and Ohio State University (Center for Microbial Interface Biology; Department of Plant Pathology), where he obtained his PhD in 2003. His undergraduate studies in Agricultural Engineering were completed in Italy at the University of Bologna. He holds a number of patents on the metabolic engineering of HMOs and he is the author of 66 papers, reviews, book chapters, and patent applications. He has served as reviewer for the U.S. National Science Foundation, NIFA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the journal Molecular Microbiology. He is currently associate editor for Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.