Research Specialties: Synthetic Microbiology; Metabolic Engineering; Applied Microbiology; Microbial Fermentation; Microbial Stress Response; Molecular Biology
 
The growing concerns of petroleum-based fuels and chemicals on global climate change and environmental pollution (e.g., plastics in the environment) combined with the revolution of synthetic and systems biology have bolstered worldwide attention into the biological production of commodity chemicals, fuels, polymers, and pharmaceuticals via renewable resources including lignocellulosic biomass. However, to compete with the well-established petrochemical industry, improving microbial processes' yield, titer, and productivity is critical. Toxicity of substrate(s), intermediate metabolite(s), and end-product(s) on the microbial host is one of the fundamental limitations that must be overcome to create tailor-made cell factories for the realistic commercialization of renewable fuels, chemicals, and polymer production. In this research landscape, our laboratory focus on the identification and dissection of complex molecular mechanisms of microbial stress responses via systems biology approaches (e.g., multi-omics/megavariate data modeling). We exclusively target identifying the novel Post-translational Protein Modifications events (PPMs) such as ubiquitination, sumoylation, and chaperone-cascade in the stress resistance of microbes (model and non-model industrial microbial hosts). We are developing novel synthetic biology tools and metabolic engineering approaches to craft efficient microbial cell factories to produce value-added fuels, chemicals, polymers from renewable biomass, and unconventional substrates such as industrial wastewater and plastic waste.