We’re excited to announce that The North Lab, Patrice Hamel Lab (OSU Molgen), Hannah Shafaat Lab (OSU Chemistry), and Ajay Shah Lab (OSU FABE) have received the OSU Presidential Research Excellence Award.

The goal of the team is to engineer the photosynthetic alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and the photosynthetic bacterium, Rhodopseudomonas palustris, for the production of renewable hydrogen gas and ethylene gas from abundant sunlight, carbon dioxide, and plant biomass. Hydrogen is the renewable fuel of the future, and ethylene the industrial platform chemical society depends upon for the production of plastics, textiles, and building materials.

Using engineered enzyme catalysts from the North and Shafaat Labs, this project makes a major leap forward in the production of hydrogen and ethylene, because oxygenic phototrophs like Chlamydomonas can get all the electrons they need from water for the production of these biofuels.

We’re excited that Caitlin, who entered the OSU graduate program in Microbiology in Fall 2022, is joining the North Lab for her graduate thesis research. Best of wishes on your graduate research career!

We’re so proud of Elizabeth Morgan, OSU Eminence Scholar, who will be heading to Cologne Germany for the summer to participate in the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst fellowship program where she will be working on biofuel production. Learn more about this exciting program at https://www.daad.de/en/

We are excited that this April Dr. Kamal Deep joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Dr. Deep is an expert in microbial metabolism and will be leading our efforts in regulating ethylene synthesis in photosynthetic bacteria and lignocellulosic bacteria for making biofuels.

We are excited to announce that in January we received an exploratory research award from DOE’s Environmental Science Laboratory to study how CO2 is converted into ethylene gas for bioplastics by our engineered Rhodospirillum rubrum strains using NMR metabolomics and HPLC-MS metabolomics.

We’re excited to have undergrads back on campus!

Elizabeth returns this year as a Sophomore. She is majoring Microbiology and is working to screen for active methylthio-alkane reductases from environmental metagenomes.

The North Lab is excited to have Josh Groves join the Lab from this years incoming class of Master’s Students at OSU.

Undergraduate researcher in the the lab has received the Ohio State University Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program Award to continue her research on nitrogenase-like enzymes in the lab. We’re proud of you Katy!

https://cen.acs.org/synthesis/biocatalysis/Enzyme-doesnt-need-oxygen-make/98/web/2020/09

Picture Credit: Andy Sproles/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy.

Ohio State, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Colorado State, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers collaborate to discover how bacteria make methionine, giving off ethylene in the process.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-08/drnl-sbc082120.php