Pfleger Lab

Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

     Welcome to the Pfleger Lab‽

We are  multi-disciplined team of researchers focused on using metabolic engineering techniques to produce value-added fuels and chemicals.  With backgrounds ranging from chemical engineering to molecular biology, we are well equipped to create a variety of solutions to any research problem.  We are currently working on a variety of projects in different organisms, including Escherichia coli, yeast and cyanobacteria.  Led by Professor Brian Pfleger, we hope to solve relevant societal problems using our expertise in synthetic biology.

Recent News

Selected Publications

Full list of publications

  • Yan Q, Cordell WT, Pfleger BF. Metabolic engineering strategies to produce medium chain oleochemicals via acyl-ACP:CoA transacylase activity. Nature Communications. (2022) DOI: 1038/s41467-022-29218-3
  • Gambacorta FV, Wagner ER, Jacobson TB, Tremaine M, Muehlbauer LK, McGee MA, Baerwald JJ, Wrobel RL, Wolters JF, Place M, Dietrich JJ, Xie D, Serate J, Gajbhiyea S, Liu L, Vang-Smith M, Coon JJ Zhang Y, Gasch AP, Amador-Noguez D, Hittinger CT, Sato TK, Pfleger BF. Comparative functional genomics identifies an iron-limited bottleneck in a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain with a cytosolic-localized isobutanol pathway. Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology. 7 (2), 738-749 (2022) DOI: 1016/j.synbio.2022.02.007
  • Gambacorta FV, Dietrich JJ, Baerwald JJ, Brown SJ, Su Y, Pfleger BF. Combinatorial library design for improving isobutanol production in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology 10:1080024 (2022) DOI 3389/fbioe.2022.1080024
  • Greenhalgh J, Falberg SA, Pfleger BF, Romero PA. Machine learning-guided acyl-ACP reductase engineering for improved in vivo fatty alcohol production. Nature Communications. (2021) Oct 5;12(1):5825. doi: 1038/s41467-021-25831-w
  • Biggs BW, Alper HS, Pfleger BF, Tyo KEJ, Santos CNS, Ajikumar PK, Stephanopoulos G. Enabling commercial success of industrial biotechnology. Science. (2021) Dec 24;374(6575):1563-1565. doi: 1126/science.abj5040