The Keasling group at the University of California, Berkeley, is a leader in the field of synthetic biology, which investigates redesigning living systems, for example to perform synthesis of a specific chemical. The Keasling group is using this expertise to develop a microbial host that produces artemisinic acid, a precursor of the antimalarial drug artemisinin. Artemisinic acid can then be converted to artemisinin using traditional chemistry.

Professor Jay Keasling has steered his group through many individual projects that successfully created the tools necessary to engineer bacteria for the “green” production of useful chemicals and for the degradation of toxic chemicals in the environment. These tools include low-copy plasmids, homogeneous promoter control, mRNA stability, models of metabolism, and novel genetic control systems. More recently, the Keasling group has tackled the development of intracellular biosensors and the use of transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and fluxomics to assess the engineered cell in order to optimize its performance. These various tools have been applied to such applications as producing protein polymers, polyketides, terpenes, and polyhydroxyalkanotes and degrading contaminants in the environment such as metals/actinides, phosphates, and nerve agents.

In carrying out the artemisinin project, the Keasling group will draw on the tools and expertise gained in these individual projects, applying them in an integrated manner to the production of a strain of E. coli that produces high yields of artemisinic acid. Through the joint efforts of this project, the microbially produced artemisinic acid will be used to help provide an affordable cure for malaria to the developing world.

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