The
Chemical
Engineering
Department
is
hosting
a
special
graduate
seminar
on Understanding
and
Engineering
Anaerobic
Metabolism
for
a
Sustainable
Environment
and
a
Net
Zero
Future.
Biography:
Dr. Ahsan Islam is a Lecturer in Biochemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Loughborough University, UK. He obtained his PhD in Genome and Systems Biology and Bioinformatics from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto, and MSc in Advanced Chemical Engineering with Biotechnology from Imperial College London. Prior to joining Loughborough University, Dr Islam was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT (https://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/chemical/staff/ahsan-islam/).
Abstract:
In this talk, I will discuss some important findings from my doctoral and postdoctoral research work on anaerobic bacterial metabolism applied towards tackling environmental bioremediation and sustainable biochemical manufacture challenges. The doctoral work involved elucidating and engineering the metabolism of Dehalococcoides mccartyi, a group of strictly anaerobic bacteria important for the bioremediation of toxic, carcinogenic, and persistent groundwater pollutants such as chlorinated ethenes. These specialized bacteria stoichiometrically dechlorinate carcinogenic chlorinated ethenes (e.g., tetrachloroethene, trichloroethene, and vinyl chloride) into benign ethenes using reductive dichlorination reactions catalyzed by their reductive dehalogenase enzymes. However, slow growth and inadequate knowledge of their metabolism are major bottlenecks towards developing an efficient and accelerated bioremediation process using these anaerobes. I will discuss how I investigated the metabolic limitations of D. mccartyi and their associated microbial community to optimize their growth through applying computational biology, systems biology, metabolic engineering, and anaerobic microbiology techniques. During the postdoctoral research, I worked on developing sustainable biomanufacturing processes for fuels and chemicals production, indispensable for a Net Zero future. I will discuss how I developed and analyzed novel biochemical routes to convert CO2 into ethylene glycol, a high demand and industrially important platform chemical, using the tools and techniques from cheminformatics, bioinformatics, systems biology, and metabolic engineering.