Mike Jewett
Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Education
Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
M.S. Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
B.S. Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering specialization (summa cum laude), University of California, Los Angeles, CA
Research Interests
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
- H. H. Wang, P.-Y. Huang, G. Xu, W. Haas, A. Marblestone, J. Li, S. P. Gygi, A. C. Forster, M. C. Jewett and G. M. Church, “Multiplexed in Vivo His-Tagging of Enzyme Pathways for in Vitro Single-Pot Multienzyme Catalysis”, Acs Synthetic Biology, (2012)
- Harris, D. C.; Jewett, M. C., “Cell-free biology: Exploiting the interface between synthetic biology and synthetic chemistry”, Current Opinion in Biotechnology, (2012)
- Hockenberry, A. J.; Jewett, M. C., “Synthetic in vitro circuits”, Current Opinion in Chemical Biology, (2012)
- Hodgman, C. E.; Jewett, M. C.; Carlson, E. D.; Gan, R., “Cell-free protein synthesis: Applications come of age”, Biotechnology Advances, (2011)
- Eric, H.C.; Jewett, MC, “Cell-free synthetic biology: Thinking outside the cell”, Metabolic engineering, (2011)
- others; Isaacs, F. J; Carr, P. A; Wang, H. H; Lajoie, M. J, “Precise Manipulation of Chromosomes in Vivo Enables Genome-Wide Codon Replacement”, Science, (2011)
- CHURCH G M;JEWETT M C, “Preparation of ribosomal subunit, involves contacting polypeptides with ribosomal nucleic acid (rRNA), incubating polypeptides and rRNAs at constant temperature and magnesium ion concentration, and assembling ribosomal subunits”, , (2010)
- Brian R Fritz;Laura E Timmerman;Nichole M Daringer;Joshua N Leonard;Michael C Jewett, “Biology by design: from top to bottom and back”, J Biomed Biotechnol, (2010)
