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

  • 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
  • McClelland DJ, Wang B, Cordell WT, Cortes-Pena Y, Gilcher E, Zhang L, Guest J, Pfleger BF, Huber GW, Dumesic JA. Renewable linear alpha-olefins by base-catalyzed dehydration of biologically-derived fatty alcohols. Green Chemistry (2021) DOI: 1039/D1GC00243K
  • Cook TB, Jacobson TB, Venkataraman MV, Hofstetter H, Amador-Noguez D, Thomas MG, Pfleger BF. Stepwise genetic engineering of Pseudomonas putida enables robust heterologous production of prodigiosin and glidobactin A. Metabolic Engineering (2021) 67, 112-124. DOI: 1016/j.ymben.2021.06.004
  • Ma J, Tominac P, Pfleger BF, Zavala V. Infrastructures for Phosphorus Recovery from Livestock Waste Using Cyanobacteria: Transportation, Techno-Economic, and Policy Implications. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. (Accepted) (2021) 9, 34, 11416–11426 DOI: 1021/acssuschemeng.1c03378
  • Ellis BM, Babele P, May JC, Johnson CH, Pfleger BF, Young JD, McLean JA. Accelerating Strain Phenotyping with Ambient Imaging Mass Spectrometry and Untargeted Molecular Analysis of Intact Microbial Colonies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA. (2021) Dec 7;118(49):e2109633118. doi: 1073/pnas.2109633118
  • Yan Q, Simmons TR, Hernandez-Lozada NJ, Cordell WT, Breckner CJ, Jindra MA, Pfleger BF. Metabolic engineering of β-oxidation to leverage thioesterases for production of 2-heptanone, 2-nonanone and 2-undecanone. Metabolic Engineering (2020) DOI: 1016/j.ymben.2020.05.008