Christina Smolke

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Christina D. Smolke (* 1975 ) is an American chemical engineer and systems biologist who is a professor at Stanford University .

Life

Christina Smolke studied chemical engineering at the University of Southern California with a bachelor's degree in 1997 and received her doctorate in 2001 from the University of California at Berkeley as a chemical engineer. There she was postdoctoral researcher in cell biology. From 2003 to 2010 she was at Caltech . She is Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford, where she has been since 2009, and a member of the Stanford Neuroscience Institute .

It uses genetic engineering methods to produce natural substances (synthetic biology), whereby the synthetic pathways are sometimes designed in a completely new way (independent of realizations in nature) "on the drawing board" and adapted to the metabolism of the host cells. In 2015, she succeeded in genetically engineering the opiates thebaine and hydrocodone with yeast cells that synthesized these substances from glucose. 23 genes from plants, bacteria and rats were incorporated into the yeast genome and the effect of various enzymes was optimized (an enzyme step was incorporated that converts S-reticulin into R-reticulin, with reticulin being a precursor of morphine biosynthesis in poppy seeds ).

In order to circumvent the limited knowledge about the functions and the interaction of genes in nature, her laboratory is developing massively parallel arrays in which the functionality of new gene combinations in cells can be explored.

In 2004 she was one of the Top 35 Young Innovators of the World by the Technology Review , in 2005 she received the Beckman Young Investigator Award , in 2006 the National Science Foundation Career Award and in 2008 she was a Sloan Research Fellow. In 2012 she received the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award.

Fonts

  • CD Smolke (editor): Metabolic pathway engineering handbook, 2 volumes, CRC Press 2009
  • Win, Maung Nyan, Christina D. Smolke. A modular and extensible RNA-based gene-regulatory platform for engineering cellular function, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 104, 2007, pp. 14283-14288.
  • Travis S. Bayer, Christina D. Smolke: Programmable ligand-controlled riboregulators of eukaryotic gene expression, Nature Biotechnology , Volume 23, 2005, pp. 337-343.
  • with Brian J. Pfleger u. a .: Combinatorial engineering of intergenic regions in operons tunes expression of multiple genes, Nature Biotechnology , Volume 24, 2006, pp. 1027-1032.
  • KM Hawkins, CD Smolke: Production of benzylisoquinoline alkaloids in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Nat. Chem. Biol., Volume 4, 2008, 564-73.
  • Maung-Nyan Win, CD Smolke: Higher-order cellular information processing with synthetic RNA devices. Science, Volume 322, 2008, pp. 456-60.
  • YY Chen, MC Jensen, CD Smolke: Genetic control of mammalian T-cell proliferation with synthetic RNA regulatory systems. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA., Vol. 107, 2010, pp. 8531-6.
  • SJ Culler, KG Hoff, CD Smolke: Reprogramming cellular behavior with RNA controllers responsive to endogenous proteins. Science, Volume 330, 2010, pp. 1251-5.
  • JC Liang, AL Chang, AB Kennedy, CD Smolke: A high-throughput, quantitative cell-based screen for efficient tailoring of RNA device activity. In: Nucleic acids research. Volume 40, number 20, November 2012, p. E154, doi: 10.1093 / nar / gks636 , PMID 22810204 , PMC 3488204 (free full text).
  • JK Michener, CD Smolke: High-throughput enzyme evolution in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using a synthetic RNA switch. Metab. Eng., Volume 14, 2012, pp. 306-16.
  • KE Galloway E. France, CD Smolke: Dynamically reshaping signaling networks to program cell fate via genetic controllers. Science, Volume 341, 2013, 1235005.
  • K. Thodey K, S. Galanie, CD Smolke: A microbial biomanufacturing platform for natural and semi-synthetic opioids. Nat. Chem. Biol., Volume 10, 2014, pp. 837-844
  • RJ Bloom, SM Winkler, CD Smolke: A quantitative framework for the forward design of synthetic miRNA circuits. Nature methods, Volume 11, 2014, pp. 1147-1153
  • Stephanie Galanie, Kate Thodey, Isis J. Trenchard, Maria Filsinger Interrante, Christina D. Smolke: Complete biosynthesis of opioids in yeast, Science, Volume 349, 2015, pp. 1095–1100

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Donald McNeil, Narcotic Drugs Can Be Coaxed From Yeast, The New York Times, Aug 13, 2015, online . It emphasizes that the production of yeast cell-based morphines with the methods used at Stanford is much too laborious compared to the production from poppy plants, but this could change quickly, which is why the research is being closely followed by the DEA.
personal data
SURNAME Smolke, Christina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smolke, Christina D.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemical engineer and systems biologist
DATE OF BIRTH 1975