Inventor José Avalos, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and his team use light to enhance the production of biofuels, drugs and commercial chemicals in bioreactors, which contain microorganisms such as yeast that have been metabolically engineered to make biological products. The team uses a technology called optogenetics — involving light to control cellular processes — to turn yeast genes on and off at specific times to optimize the production of the desired chemical or product.

The precise genetic control available through optogenetics addresses a longstanding goal in metabolic engineering: to create microorganisms that produce large quantities of a product that may be toxic to the organisms themselves. With the system developed by Avalos and his team, simply turning on the light can switch off the synthesis of the engineered product, while turning off the light can restart production. Different amounts of light give different rates and levels of production that allow the researchers to fine-tune and optimize the engineered pathway.
Avalos and his team have developed “gene circuits” that use light to control the activity of several genes simultaneously. These light-sensitive gene circuits can simplify the optimization of metabolic pathways, and reduce the cost of production. “This is a whole new way to operate bioreactors,” Avalos said.

Team members include Evan Zhao, graduate student in chemical and biological engineering.

Collaborators include Yannis Kevrekidis, the Pomeroy and Betty Perry Smith Professor in Engineering, Emeritus, professor of chemical and biological engineering and applied and computational mathematics, emeritus, senior scholar; and Jared Toettcher, assistant professor of molecular biology.

Development status Patent protection is pending. Princeton is seeking outside interest for further development of this technology.

Funding sources include the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and Princeton University’s Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund.

Learn more at https://invention.princeton.edu.

Videographer and editor: Evelyn Tu, Flying Camel Media
Video producer: Catherine Zandonella, Office of the Dean for Research
Copyright 2017 The Trustees of Princeton University

Tags: biofuel light optogenetics metabolic-engeering genetic-control