Life Sciences Seminar: External Speaker, Dr. Benjamin M. Woolston, "Engineering Bacteria to Solve Problems in Renewable Chemical Production and Human Health"

Benjamin M. Woolston, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering

Northeastern University

Hosted by: Assistant Professor Natalie Farny

Tuesday, February 25, 12:00 pm

Gateway 1002 ~ Pizza will be served

Abstract: 

The synthetic biology revolution has given us the ability to genetically reprogram microbes to serve a wide variety of purposes, from miniscule chemical factories that orchestrate exquisitely selective enzymatic pathways to produce fuels, pharmaceuticals, and polymers, to biological computers that can sense their chemical environment and implement complex decision-making algorithms. The overall goal of the Woolston lab is to harness this potential for applications in renewable energy production and the human gut microbiota. This talk will present an overview of the two major current thrusts of the lab: In the first, we are engineering anaerobic bacteria for the conversion of renewable single-carbon feedstocks to biofuels, taking advantage of a number of economic and ethical benefits of using these substrates compared to 1st and 2nd generation biofuel efforts. In the second, we are developing engineered microbes that can sense and modulate the levels of disease-associated metabolites in the human gut, with an initial focus on hydrogen sulfide; a toxic, volatile molecule implicated in the onset of IBD and colorectal cancer. As well as the exciting, applied potential of the resultant technology, these efforts provide us with model systems with which to ask broader fundamental questions about microbial metabolism.

Bio: 

Dr. Woolston joined the Northeastern University Chemical Engineering department as an Assistant Professor in January 2020. He obtained his B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. As an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Dr. Woolston received his PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2017 from MIT under the guidance of Prof. Greg Stephanopoulos. His post-doctoral work was conducted in the laboratory of Prof. Emily Balskus in the Chemistry & Chemical Biology department at Harvard University. At Northeastern, his research program combines approaches from his previous training in metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, biochemistry and microbiology to engineer microbes for biofuel & biochemical production from single-carbon feedstocks, and as diagnostics and therapeutics in the Human gut microbiota. He teaches undergraduate Biochemical Engineering, and graduate coursework in Kinetics & Reactor Design, and Biopharmaceutical Engineering. He has authored 24 publications and one patent and serves on the editorial board of Metabolic Engineering Communications and the Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology. He is also the winner of the International Metabolic Engineering Society Jay Bailey Young Investigator award, the Biotechnology and Bioengineering Daniel I.C. Wang award, an NIH NIBIB Trailblazer Award, and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. Outside the lab, he is an avid tennis player and triathlete, completing his first Ironman in 2018.