Jay D. Keasling

Jay Keasling engineers microorganisms to synthesize hydrocarbon biofuels with properties identical to those of petroleum-based fuels, reducing the production of greenhouse gases while allowing continued use of existing transportation infrastructure. He developed approaches to construct long, complicated, metabolic pathways and to control their productivity, including scaffolding techniques to speed flow of materials through biosynthetic pathways and computational methods to remodel proteins and design RNA-based control systems. He then applied these approaches to microbial production of low-cost drugs for the developing world and alternative fuels and chemicals to petroleum derivatives. Keasling also engineered microorganisms to produce artemisinic acid, a precursor to the anti-malarial drug artemisinin.~~