UC Berkeley

Synthetic biology attempts to make inherently chaotic biological systems both predictable and useful. To achieve this, well characterized genetic parts are necessary both to control genetic circuitry as well as to catalyze specific chemical reactions. While the discipline is maturing, the number of chemical reactions we can catalyze and the number of means to control the expression of these enzymes is still extremely limited in the context of what occurs in nature. It therefore behooves the discipline to rapidly explore nature for biological novelty so we can then leverage it for biological programming. Herein I utilize multiple functional genomics techniques to uncover novel enzymatic and regulatory elements within the lysine catabolism of the bacterium Pseudomonas putida. From these data we are able to develop novel tools for synthetic biology, improve P. putida as a chassis for metabolic engineering of bioproducts, as well as make fundamental discoveries about previously unknown enzymatic steps of the lysine catabolism of both bacteria and plants.