MolES Seminar – Winter 2025_Dr. Ben Woolston_Engineering bacteria to solve problems in renewable chemical production and human health

Engineering bacteria to solve problems in renewable chemical production and human health

Dr. Ben Woolston

Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering

Northeastern University

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