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Michael C. Jewett
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Our research aims to engineer biological systems for compelling applications in medicine and biotechnology. We focus on cell-free systems, with particular emphasis on protein synthesis and metabolism. Engineering cell-free systems both tests our understanding of how life works and generates useful, cost-effective factories for manufacturing human therapeutics and valuable biochemicals that are difficult to make in vivo. Our approach is to integrate fundamental research and engineering design principles with technology development. Our interdisciplinary efforts take advantage of synergies at the crossroads of biological and engineering science. They represent a bottom-up approach to synthetic biology. The key idea is that design and construction of biological systems will become easier and more reliable if we can develop foundational technologies that partition biology into simple modular pieces that we can directly manipulate and control. To this end, it is desirable to reduce the complexity of existing biological systems and remove unnecessary overhead (e.g. unnecessary genes and evolutionary baggage). Cell-free systems, which are decoupled from the genetic architecture of the cell, offer a unique platform to address this need. They reduce complexity, lack structural boundaries, are free from cell viability constraints, and can direct catalytic resources towards a single objective. As a result, cell-free systems promise to catalyze a new paradigm for studying, tuning, and controlling life.
Selected publications: Jewett, M.C., Calhoun, K.A., Voloshin, A., Wuu, J.J., and Swartz, J.R. 2008. An integrated cell-free metabolic platform for protein production and synthetic biology. Molecular Systems Biology. 4:220. Nielsen J., and Jewett, M.C. 2008. The impact of systems biology and metabolic engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. FEMS Yeast Res. 8:122-31. Jewett, M.C., Hofmann, G., and Nielsen, J. 2006. Fungal metabolite analysis in genomics and phenomics. Curr Opin Biotechnol. 17:191-197. Jewett, M.C., and Swartz, J.R. 2004. Substrate replenishment extends protein synthesis with an in vitro system designed to mimic the cytoplasm. Biotechnol Bioeng. 87:465-472. Jewett, M.C., and Swartz, J.R. 2004. Mimicking the Escherichia coli cytoplasmic environment activates long-lived and efficient protein synthesis. Biotechnol Bioeng. 86:19-26. Jewett, M.C., and Swartz, J.R. 2004. Rapid expression and purification of 100 nmol quantities of active protein using cell-free protein synthesis. Biotechnol Prog. 20:102-109.
Prof. Michael C. Jewett tel: 617/432-6219
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Administrative & Emeritus Faculty Master of Biotechnology Program Faculty and Staff
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