Twenty Years of Metabolic Engineering: Foundation of a Bio-based Economy
Monday October 17, 2011
3:15 - 5:45 pm
Overview:
Metabolic engineering is a young field, just about twenty years old. During this period, it has developed new concepts, a well defined methodology, and a research portfolio of rich and intellectual content of particular relevance to biotechnology and biological engineering. Its goals to harness immense potential of microorganisms for the production of the useful products, in particular from renewable resources.This it does by engineering the cellular metabolism such as to favor product-forming pathways while maintaining normal cellular functions. Having been founded on modern genetic methods and concepts of chemical reaction engineering, metabolic engineering is rapidly becoming the enabling technology for the production of fuels, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, thus laying the foundations of a new bio-based economy. Talks and past discussion in this session will review past accomplishments and future challenges of metabolic engineering.
Program Speakers:
Sang Yup Lee
Head, Metabolic and Biomolecular Engineering
National Research Laboratory
Patrick R. Gruber
CEO
Gevo
Panel:
Terry Papoutsakis
Eugene DuPont Professor
University of Delaware Department of Chemical Engineering
Eric Toone
Deputy Director for Technology
Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy
Chaitan Khosla
Wells H. Rauser and Harold M. Petiprin Professor
Stanford University Department of Chemical Engineering
Moderator:
Greg Stephanopoulos
Bayer Professor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Chemical Engineering