BIOMOLECULAR ENGINEERING AND SYSTEMS BIOLOGY
Professors Liao, Monbouquette, Tang, Orkoulas, Ignarro and Segura
Since the discovery of gene splicing techniques over 20 years ago, California has been the focus of the nation's burgeoning biotechnology industry. This state hosts a third of the nation's public biotechnology companies, and its firms account for over 50% of industry sales and better than 60% of the nation's biotech employees. Southern California, in particular, is one of the focal areas of biotechnology research and commercialization. Highlighted by two recent Nobel prizes (Paul Boyer, 1997, for discovery of ATPase in energy metabolism; and Louis Ignarro, 1998, for discovery of roles of nitric oxide in medical physiology), UCLA is among the best campuses for research in biosciences and bioengineering.
E. coli engineered by UCLA graduate students to produce astaxanthin (orange), compared to the native cells (off-white).
Bioengineering, in particular, is one of the major thrust areas in the Chemical Engineering Department. Research in the Chemical Engineering Department focuses on manipulation of cells, DNA, and proteins for applications in biotechnology and clinical medicine. Both theoretical and experimental tools are developed to address current scientific and engineering issues of high societal impact. Current efforts of bioengineering research in this Department are in the areas of genomics and metabolic engineering, bioinformatics, biosensors, biomimetic systems, blood flow regulation, and artificial blood substitutes. Cutting edge technology, such as DNA microarray and nano fabrication technology are being used in conjunction with mathematical tools to advance bioscience and engineering.
Prof. Monbouquette and a custom-built, glass-lined-steel fermenter for the culture of extremely thermophilic microbes.
Significant progress in the past few years includes the development of an artificial gene circuit for production of a novel product in E. coli, a hierarchical model for a DNA microarray, discovery of a novel thermostable, chiral-specific enzyme for L-amino acid synthesis, construction of a novel metabolic pathway in E. coli that synthesizes a large variety of important bioactive molecules, and discovery of a novel mechanism that regulates blood flow. In addition to numerous publications in top journals, the quality of research resulted in two graduate students receiving the American Chemical Society's Peterson Award for best paper presentation and two others assuming faculty positions in highly ranked Chemical Engineering Departments.
Among the three Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering faculty members, research efforts converge to three common thrust areas with several specific applications. These common thrusts are (1) the development of functional genomic and proteomic techniques for rapid characterization of metabolic activities in microorganisms, (2) engineering of metabolic pathway and protein function to generate novel activities for biosynthesis and biosensing, and (3) liposome biomimetics for creation of artificial red blood cells and novel separations and diagnostic schemes. Specific projects are briefly described in the research description of the faculty members.
DNA microarray manufacturing facility at the
Department of Chemical Engineering, UCLA.
The molecular and cellular bioengineering laboratories in the Department are well equipped and supported. State-of-the-art instrumentation, such as DNA microarrays, is used to generate a large amount of gene expression data for bioinformatic analysis. HPLC coupled with a diode array detection system and electron ionization mass spectrophotometer is used in the development of functional proteomic screening methods. A spectrofluorometer and a laser light scattering instrument are used in characterizing enzymes and lipid vesicles. A unique, glass-lined steel 100-liter fermentor, which was designed and built by UCLA chemical engineers, is used for pilot-scale archaean cultures for proteomic characterization. These facilities are complemented by complete laboratories with the analytical and preparatory equipment for DNA manipulation, protein characterization, and hematology measurements. Other facilities on campus such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and electron microscopy are also being used in various projects. Software packages are developed and used for molecular simulation, DNA hybridization image analysis, DNA/protein sequence analysis, metabolic analysis, and spectra deconvolution.
The department offers a sequence of three cellular and molecular bioengineering lecture courses: Molecular Biotechnoloy, Biochemical Reaction Engineering, and Bioseparations and Bioprocess Engineering, which may be followed by a laboratory course in Bioprocess Technology, that provides hands-on training with bioreactors and protein purification to the pilot-scale. Chemical Engineering graduate students also benefit from the presence of excellent courses in chemistry, life sciences, and medicine. Most students pursue a minor in these areas to augment the bioengineering courses available in the Chemical Engineering Department.
UCLA's NSF-supported Bioinformatics Training Program provides financial support to both life science and bioengineering graduate students, encourages collaboration among the various disciplines, and offers trainees an opportunity to intern at local biotechnology companies. The department has strong ties with the UCLA medical school, which provides the patient basis for medicine-related projects. Bioengineering students have opportunities to work together with physicians on clinically significant problems. The cutting-edge projects, excellent facilities, interdisciplinary programs, and the excellence of UCLA's academic infrastructure provide an outstanding learning and research environment for students in the cellular and molecular bioengineering program.
Image of DNA microarray of the whole E. coli genome.