FOCUS ON NEW FACULTY:
Jennie Reed and Brian Pfleger add strengths in systems/synthetic biology
 his past July, the department welcomed two new assistant professors to the faculty: Brian Pfleger, whose research interests lie in the general area of synthetic biology, and Jennie Reed, whose interests are in systems biology.
The latter research area integrates experimentation, theory, and computational modeling to study biological systems, engineer cells, and expand our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying observed cellular behavior. Synthetic biology takes the next step to design and construct new biological parts, devices, and systems, and re-design existing, natural biological systems for useful purposes.
Brian and Jennie bring to the department exciting research and teaching interests that complement each other as well as existing strengths within the department and campus-wide.
Brian received his PhD in chemical engineering in 2005 from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Professor Jay Keasling. At Berkeley, Brian was part of a team that developed a strain of Escherichia coli capable of producing the anti-malarial drug, artemisinin. In work described in Nature Biotechnology, Brian developed a method to control the relative expression of genes that he applied to a portion of the artemisinin biosynthetic pathway to achieve a seven-fold increase in production of a limiting intermediate, an advance that should substantially lower the cost to produce this important drug.
Brian won a competitive post-doctoral fellowship from the NIH funded Great Lakes Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research to work in the research group of Professor David Sherman at the University of Michigan. There he developed expertise in protein biochemistry and enzymology, while working to characterize a key enzymatic pathway associated with virulence in Bacillus anthrasis, the causative agent of anthrax. His work yielded valuable insights into novel drug targets for combating the disease.
Jennie received her PhD in bioengineering in 2005 from the University of California, San Diego working with Bernhard Palsson, and she continued in the Palsson group as a postdoctoral researcher after receiving a UCSD Faculty Fellowship. These fellowships provide teaching and research experience, and are intended to prepare select individuals for faculty careers. Jennie twice won awards as a teaching assistant, and joins us with much more teaching experience than is typical of new faculty members.
While at UCSD, Jennie developed some of the most comprehensive and widely used models of E. coli metabolism and regulation to date. Among other studies based on her models, she used computation and experiment to predict and confirm six new gene functions in E. coli, the world’s most thoroughly studied organism, results that she published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Her models have been made available on the web, and researchers worldwide have published studies based on them.
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The Lightfoot heritage at UW-Madison
In 1953, the UW Department of Chemical Engineering made a big commitment to biological engineering by hiring Ed Lightfoot to the faculty. Today, the UW-Madison Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is proud to count three of Ed’s academic progeny among the faculty: Nick Abbott received his PhD in chemical engineering at MIT under Alan Hatton, who in turn received his PhD in 1981 with Ed Lightfoot, which makes Nick Ed’s academic grandson.
Jennie Reed’s PhD advisor, Bernhard Palsson, received his PhD from Ed in 1984, so Jennie is Ed’s academic granddaughter. Bernhard was also advisor to Jay Keasling, who in turn advised Brian Pfleger, so Brian is Ed’s academic great-grandson, and, as Ed points out, that makes Jennie Brian’s academic aunt.
As Ed said, “I think we have a Gilbert and Sullivan situation here if we are clever enough to exploit it |
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