CDB Seminar - Eriko Takano, Manchester University

Title: What do we need for microbial synthetic biology?

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CDB Seminar - Eriko Takano, Manchester University

13 Jan 2022, 11:00 – 12:00

Host: Masa Tada

Talk abstract: We aim to design and construct micro-organisms with new functionalities by exploiting synthetic biology for metabolic engineering in the context of chemical production. As a first step towards re-engineering these chemical pathways for enhanced productivity and diversity, we are developing tools for the “Design/Build/Test/Learn” steps. We will give examples of these tools and how we are exploiting the Design/Build/Test/Learn cycle at the Manchester Synthetic Biology Research Centre, SYNBIOCHEM, which provides a platform for the high-throughput engineering of fine and speciality chemicals production in microbial systems.

We are expanding our collection of “Design” tools: computational tools for the detection and analysis of secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene clusters, and to enrich our library of parts and building blocks for pathway engineering (Del Carratore et al., Commun Biol 2019). We also use computational constraint-based modelling to pinpoint biosynthetic bottlenecks to target for further cellular engineering in a synthetic biology strategy (Amara et al., BMC Genomics 2018). We “Build” libraries in an aim to understand the interchangeability of biosynthetic parts and have designed and assembled pathways using these parts (Cummings et al., PLOS Biol, 2019), and will engineer orthogonal circuits based on signalling molecule circuits (Biarnes-Carrera et al., ACS Synth Biol 2018). We “Test” using high-resolution MS analysis, which we also employ for the debugging of the engineered systems (Nitta et al., Front Bioeng Biotechnol 2020). This finally leads to the completion of the cycle where we “Learn” rules for efficient design (Jervis et al., ACS Synth Biol 2018). By exploiting all these tools in the Design/Build/Test/Learn cycle, the Manchester Synthetic Biology Research Centre, SYNBIOCHEM, provides a platform for the high-throughput engineering of fine and speciality chemicals production in microbial systems (Carbonell et al., Communications Biology 2018; Robinson et al., Metab Eng 2020; Dunstan MS et al., Synthetic Biolog 2020).

Zoom Meeting: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/94731505744?pwd=cVN4QUNleUVqd3p5MW5BcnBnNlVldz09

Meeting ID: 947 3150 5744

Passcode: 749475

Eriko Takano

Manchester University

Prof. Eriko Takano has an internationally leading position in the field of small signalling molecules in Streptomyces coelicolor, the model organism of the major group of commercial antibiotic producers. She has been working in both industrial and academic Streptomyces research for 26 years. She studied pharmacy at Kitasato University, School of Pharmacy, Tokyo, Japan. After working as a researcher at the Department of Genetics of Meiji Seika Kaisha, Yokohama, Japan, for four years, she moved to the John Innes Center, Norwich, UK, where she obtained her PhD from the University of East Anglia in 1994 and worked as a postdoc in the Molecular Microbiology department until 2002. After three years as Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology / Biotechnology, University of Tübingen, Germany, she was appointed as a Rosalind Franklin Fellow in Microbial Physiology at the Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute (GBB), University of Groningen, The Netherlands in 2006 and as an Associate Professor in Synthetic Microbiology at 2010. Since September 2012 she is Professor of Synthetic Biology at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology and from 2014 the Biotechonology and Synthetic Biology Research Theme Director in FLS.

Present and past funding include BBSRC, ERA-IB Terpenosome, STW (the Dutch Research Agency, Technology Foundation), NWO (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), BE-Basic, EraSysBio SysMO-STREAM, EUFP6 ActinoGEN, DFG.

She has been awarded the Rosalind Franklin Fellowship from the University of Groningen (2006), Naito Kinen Kaigai Ryigaku Jyoseikin from the Naito Foundation Japan (1994), Lepetit Award from Lepetit and the Italian Society for General Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology (1993).

Areas of expertise of the Takano group include the synthetic biology of antibiotic production: bioinformatics software development (e.g. antiSMASH, MultiGeneBlast); untargeted metabolomics for chassis engineering in Streptomyces; regulatory circuits engineering through signalling molecules; translational control using noncoding RNAs; biosynthetic pathway engineering; systems biology of the metabolic switch from primary to secondary metabolism; regulation of antibiotic production through signalling molecules and noncoding RNAs in Streptomyces coelicolor, the model organism of the most important group of industrial antibiotics producers.