BS, University of California, Los Angeles MS, PhD, Stanford University Merck Technology Fellow NIH Biotechnology Training Grant Fellow Centennial Teaching Assistant, Stanford University NSF International Research Fellow, Technical University of Denmark Research Fellow in Genetics, Harvard Medical School synthetic biology, cell-free biology, biotechnology, artificial cells, systems biology, metabolic engineering

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.

Recent publications:

Nielsen, J., and Jewett, M.C. 2007. Impact of systems biology on metabolic engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. FEMS Yeast Res. in press.

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
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Northwestern University
2145 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208-3120

Note - Dr. Jewett is currently completing postdoctoral work
at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Genetics