Research:
- Microbial Caffeine Metabolism
- Metabolic engineering of E. coli to produce high-value chemicals from caffeine.
- Elucidating the structure of caffeine-degrading enzymes from Pseudomonas putida CBB5.
- Understanding the microbial genetics of caffeine metabolism.
- Engineering the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to degrade caffeine.
- Probiotic Bacteria
- Riboswitches
- Synthetic Biology to Enable Metabolic Engineering
Areas of Research:
- Metabolic Engineering
- Synthetic Biology
- Biochemical Engineering for Production of Chemicals
- Fuels
- Pharmaceuticals
The Summers’ lab is working to metabolically engineer bacteria and yeast cells to produce chemicals, fuels, and pharmaceuticals. Specifically, the group focuses on engineering enzymes, gene networks, and genetic regulatory elements in microbial cells.
The group is also working to determine the structures of caffeine‐degrading enzymes in bacteria using X‐ray crystallography.
Other projects in the Summers’ lab include metabolic engineering of probiotic bacteria for in situ delivery of amino acids, characterization of genetic regulatory elements in probiotic bacteria, design of modular plasmids for metabolic engineering of E. coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and other microbial strains, and construction of novel riboswitches that recognize small molecules.
