Speaker:
Title:
Using Yeast to Clean Contaminated Waters
Abstract:
My talk will highlight the limitations in current remediation methods and argue for the use of biologically engineered strategies for more cost-effective and efficient processes to handle heavy metal waste. Specifically, my work exploits natural pathways in yeast to preferentially uptake and recycle heavy metal toxins. These strategies are 1) cell surface display of metal-binding and nucleating peptides, 2) engineered metal transporters for metal uptake, and 3) engineered metabolic pathways that preferentially react with, or reduce, heavy metals.