EECE Seminar ~ Dr. Yongqin Jiao

About this event

Dr. Yongqin Jiao, Center Director

Center for Bioengineering & Biomanufacturing

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Engineering Biology Under Real-World Constraints: Evolution, Selectivity, and Process Performance

Abstract :

Engineering biology gives us increasing ability to redesign biological functions, but a system that works in the lab is not automatically useful in the real world. Engineered systems have to remain stable over time, function under physical and chemical constraints, and ultimately provide an advantage at the process level.

In this seminar, I will discuss two examples from our work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. First, I will describe efforts to build more evolutionarily robust biocontainment systems using overlapping genes to couple engineered functions and reduce escape. Second, I will discuss bio-enabled rare-earth separations, where naturally evolved metal-binding proteins are being engineered, immobilized, and incorporated into separation processes. Here, properties such as metal-binding affinity, selectivity, kinetics, and stability only matter if they lead to better process performance.

I will close with a brief look at emerging efforts to make metal selectivity more predictable by combining coordination chemistry, protein design, and automated experimentation. Across these examples, a common theme is that biological function needs to be designed with evolution, physical chemistry, and process requirements in mind from the beginning.

Bio :

Yongqin Jiao leads the Center for Bioengineering and Biomanufacturing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The Center brings together biology, engineering, and computation to advance biomanufacturing. Her research focuses on engineering biological systems for national security and advanced manufacturing applications. She leads DOE- and DARPA-supported programs spanning fundamental biological design, process development, and scale-up. Her work increasingly focuses on making engineered biological systems more predictable, robust, and effective under real-world conditions.