Physical Biosciences Division One Stop
Inorganic Nanoscale Assemblies for Artificial Photosynthesis
When: Tuesday, December 6th at 12 - 1 PM
Where: Tan Hall Room 775 on UCB Campus
Featuring: Dr. Heinz Frei
Abstract:
Sunlight is an unlimited source of energy for converting carbon dioxide and water to a transportable fuel. In an effort to develop a system that generates renewable fuel using sunlight, we are developing an inorganic artificial assembly made of Earth abundant, robust materials. All-inorganic binuclear units anchored in a nanoporous silica scaffold serve as visible light absorbers driving catalysts for water oxidation and carbon dioxide reduction. Nano-structured Co oxide (Co3O4) or mixed-phase Mn oxide clusters inside the silica channels evolve oxygen from water efficiently. Structural and mechanistic studies of the photocatalytic units using optical, vibrational, EPR and X-ray spectroscopic tools provide key insights for advancing the design of the components and assembly of the system. Methods are explored for the efficient coupling of the photoactive components across a product-separating nanoscale membrane. Watch Here>
When: Thursday, July 7th, 2011 at 12 - 1PM
Where: Tan Hall Room 775 on UCB Campus
Featuring: Erna Grasz
Towards Scalable Synthetic Biology for Engineering Beyond the Bioreactor
When: Thursday, May 26th at 12 - 1 PM
Where: Tan Hall Room 775 on UCB Campus
Featuring: Dr. Adam Arkin
Abstract:
Our current ability to engineer biological circuits is hindered by design cycles that are costly in terms of time and money, with constructs failing to operate as desired, or evolving away from the desired function once deployed. Synthetic biologists seek to understand biological design principles and use them to create technologies that increase the efficiency of the genetic engineering design cycle. Central to the approach is the creation of biological parts — encapsulated functions that can be composited together to create new pathways with predictable behaviors. We have defined five desirable characteristics of biological parts — independence, reliability, tunability, orthogonality and composability. We demonstrate these concepts with examples of controllers of gene expression that exercise these properties and point to how the engineering goals of synthetic biology can be met.
We suggest that the creation of appropriate sets of families of parts with these properties is a prerequisite for efficient, predictable engineering of new function in cells and will enable a large increase in the sophistication of genetic engineering applications. We further argue that the true power of such a framework is only realized when engineering the complex behaviors of cells, such as required for operation beyond the bioreactor and biosynthetic operations. We describe our efforts in such engineering viruses and bacteria for HIV and cancer therapies respectively.
