Christopher Voigt

Christopher Voigt is an American synthetic biologist, molecular biophysicist, and engineer.[1][2]

Christopher A. Voigt
Christopher Voigt at the Office of Naval Research, 2016
Born
Ann Arbor, Michigan
NationalityU.S.
CitizenshipU.S.
Alma materUniversity of Michigan
California Institute of Technology
University of California - Berkeley
Scientific career
FieldsSynthetic Biology, Biotechnology, Genetic Engineering, Biological Engineering
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology, UCSF
Doctoral advisorZhen-Gang Wang, Frances Arnold, Stephen Mayo, Adam P Arkin (Postdoctoral)

Career

Voigt is the Daniel I.C. Wang Professor of Advanced Biotechnology in the Department of Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He works in the developing field of synthetic biology. He is the co-director of the Synthetic Biology Center [3] at MIT and the co-founder of the MIT-Broad Foundry.[4][5]

His research interests focus on the programming of cells to perform coordinated and complex tasks for applications in medicine, agriculture, and industry. His works include:

  • Design of genetic circuits in bacteria, yeast and mammalian cells.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Encoded in DNA, these circuits implement computational operations inside of cells.
  • Software to program living cells (Cello), which is based on principles from electronic design automation and is based on Verilog.[13][14]
  • Genetically encoded sensors that enables cells to respond to chemicals, environmental cues, and colored light.[15][16][17][18]
  • Computational tools to design precision genetic parts, based on biophysics, bioinformatics, and machine learning.[19][20]
  • Therapeutic bacteria to navigate the human body and identify and correct disease states.[21][22]
  • Redesign of the nitrogen fixation gene cluster to facilitate its transfer between organisms and control with synthetic sensors and circuits.[23][24]
  • Pharmaceutical discovery from large databases of DNA sequences, including the human gut microbiome, though high-throughput pathway recoding and DNA synthesis.[25][26]
  • Harnessing cells to produce materials, including spider silk, nylon-6, and DNA nanomaterials.[27][28][29]

In addition, he is the:

  • Founding Member of the National Science Foundation-funded Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC),[30] renamed the Engineering Biology Research Center (EBRC).[31]
  • Editor-in-Chief of ACS Synthetic Biology.[32]
  • Co-founder of the companies Asimov[33] (cellular programming) and Pivot Biotechnologies[34] (agriculture).
  • Co-founder of the Synthetic Biology: Engineering Evolution and Design (SEED) Conference Series.[35]
  • Chair of the SAB for the Dutch chemical company DSM.

His former students have founded Asimov[36] (mammalian synthetic biology), De Novo DNA[37] (computational design), Bolt Threads[38] (spider silk-based textiles), Pivot Bio[39] (agriculture), and Industrial Microbes[40] (methane consuming organisms).

References
  1. Brogan, Jacob (3 April 2017). "Your Cheat-Sheet Guide to Synthetic Biology" – via Slate.
  2. Kwok, Roberta (20 January 2010). "Five hard truths for synthetic biology". Nature. 463 (7279): 288–290. doi:10.1038/463288a. PMID 20090726.
  3. "MIT Synthetic Biology Center".
  4. "MIT-Broad Foundry".
  5. "DARPA Gives MIT Lab $32 Million To Program Living Cells". Popular Science. 2015. Retrieved September 30, 2015.
  6. Tamsir A, Tabor JJ, Voigt CA (2011). "Robust multicellular computing using genetically encoded NOR gates and chemical 'wires'". Nature. 469 (7329): 212–5. Bibcode:2011Natur.469..212T. doi:10.1038/nature09565. PMC 3904220. PMID 21150903.
  7. Lou C, Stanton BC, Chen YJ, Munsky B, Voigt CA (2012). "Ribozyme-based insulator parts buffer synthetic circuits from genetic context". Nature Biotechnology. 30 (11): 1137–42. doi:10.1038/nbt.2401. PMC 3914141. PMID 23034349.
  8. Brophy JA, Voigt CA (2014). "Principles of genetic circuit design". Nature Methods. 11 (5): 508–20. doi:10.1038/nmeth.2926. PMC 4230274. PMID 24781324.
  9. Yang L, Nielsen AA, Fernandez-Rodriguez J, McClune CJ, Laub MT, Voigt CA (2014). "Permanent genetic memory with >1-byte capacity". Nature Methods. 11 (12): 1261–6. doi:10.1038/nmeth.3147. PMC 4245323. PMID 25344638.
  10. Moon TS, Lou C, Tamsir A, Stanton BC, Voigt CA (2012). "Genetic programs constructed from layered logic gates in single cells". Nature. 491 (7423): 249–53. Bibcode:2012Natur.491..249M. doi:10.1038/nature11516. PMC 3904217. PMID 23041931.
  11. Anderson JC, Voigt CA, Arkin AP (2007). "Environmental signal integration by a modular AND gate". Mol. Syst. Biol. 3 (1): 133. doi:10.1038/msb4100173. PMC 1964800. PMID 17700541.
  12. "A programming language for living cells". Phys.org. Retrieved March 31, 2016.
  13. "Cello Software".
  14. Nielsen AA, Der BS, Shin J, Vaidyanathan P, Paralanov V, Strychalski EA, Ross D, Densmore D, Voigt CA (2016). "Genetic circuit design automation". Science. 352 (6281): aac7341. doi:10.1126/science.aac7341. PMID 27034378.
  15. Fernandez-Rodriguez J, Moser F, Song M, Voigt CA (2017). "Engineering RGB color vision into Escherichia coli". Nature Chemical Biology. 13 (7): 706–8. doi:10.1038/nchembio.2390. PMID 28530708.
  16. Levskaya A, Weiner OD, Lim WA, Voigt CA (2009). "Spatiotemporal control of cell signalling using a light-switchable protein interaction". Nature. 461 (7266): 997–1001. Bibcode:2009Natur.461..997L. doi:10.1038/nature08446. PMC 2989900. PMID 19749742.
  17. Levskaya A, Chevalier AA, Tabor JJ, Simpson ZB, Lavery LA, Levy M, Davidson EA, Scouras A, Ellington AD, Marcotte EM, Voigt CA (2005). "Synthetic biology: engineering Escherichia coli to see light". Nature. 438 (7067): 441–2. Bibcode:2005Natur.438..441L. doi:10.1038/nature04405. PMID 16306980. S2CID 4428475.
  18. Stanton BC, Nielsen AA, Tamsir A, Clancy K, Peterson T, Voigt CA (2014). "Genomic Mining of Prokaryotic Repressors for Orthogonal Logic Gates". Nat Chem Biol. 10 (2): 99–105. doi:10.1038/nchembio.1411. PMC 4165527. PMID 24316737.
  19. Chen YJ, Liu P, Nielsen AA, Brophy JA, Clancy K, Peterson T, Voigt CA (2013). "Characterization of 582 natural and synthetic terminators and quantification of their design constraints". Nature. 10 (7): 659–64. doi:10.1038/nmeth.2515. PMID 23727987. S2CID 205421681.
  20. Salis H, Mirsky E, Voigt CA (2009). "Automated Design of Synthetic Ribosome Binding Sites to Precisely Control Protein Expression". Nature Biotechnology. 27 (10): 946–50. doi:10.1038/nbt.1568. PMC 2782888. PMID 19801975.
  21. Anderson JC, Clarke EJ, Arkin AP, Voigt CA (2006). "Environmentally Controlled Invasion of Cancer Cells by Engineered Bacteria". Journal of Molecular Biology. 355 (4): 619–27. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.161.6839. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2005.10.076. PMID 16330045.
  22. Mimee M, Tucker A, Voigt CA, Lu TK (2015). "Programming a Human Commensal Bacterium, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, to Sense and Respond to Stimuli in the Murine Gut Microbiota". Cell Systems. 1 (1): 62–71. doi:10.1016/j.cels.2015.06.001. PMC 4762051. PMID 26918244.
  23. Temme K, Zhao D, Voigt CA (2012). "Refactoring the nitrogen fixation gene cluster from Klebsiella oxytoca". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 109 (18): 7085–7090. Bibcode:2012PNAS..109.7085T. doi:10.1073/pnas.1120788109. PMC 3345007. PMID 22509035.
  24. Smanski MJ, Bhatia S, Zhao D, Park Y, Woodruff LB, Giannoukos G, Ciulla D, Busby M, Calderon J, Nicol R, Gordon DB, Densmore D, Voigt CA (2014). "Functional optimization of gene clusters by combinatorial design and assembly". Nature Biotechnology. 32 (12): 1241–9. doi:10.1038/nbt.3063. PMID 25419741. S2CID 6527069.
  25. Smanski MJ, Zhou H, Claesen J, Shen B, Fischbach MA, Voigt CA (2016). "Synthetic biology to access and expand nature's chemical diversity". Nat Rev Microbiol. 14 (3): 135–149. doi:10.1038/nrmicro.2015.24. PMC 5048682. PMID 26876034.
  26. Temme K, Zhao D, Voigt CA (2012). "Refactoring the nitrogen fixation gene cluster from Klebsiella oxytoca". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 109 (18): 7085–7090. Bibcode:2012PNAS..109.7085T. doi:10.1073/pnas.1120788109. PMC 3345007. PMID 22509035.
  27. Widmaier DM, Tullman-Ercek D, Mirsky EA, Hill R, Govindarajan S, Minshull J, Voigt CA (2009). "Engineering the Salmonella type III secretion system to export spider silk monomers". Mol Syst Biol. 5 (309): 309. doi:10.1038/msb.2009.62. PMC 2758716. PMID 19756048.
  28. Zhou H, Vonk B, Roubos JA, Bovenberg RA, Voigt CA (2015). "Algorithmic co-optimization of genetic constructs and growth conditions: application to 6-ACA, a potential nylon-6 precursor". Nucleic Acids Res. 43 (21): 10560–70. doi:10.1093/nar/gkv1071. PMC 4666358. PMID 26519464.
  29. Elbaz J, Yin P, Voigt CA (2016). "Genetic encoding of DNA nanostructures and their self-assembly in living bacteria". Nature Communications. 7: 11179. Bibcode:2016NatCo...711179E. doi:10.1038/ncomms11179. PMC 4838831. PMID 27091073.
  30. "Synberc".
  31. "Ebrc".
  32. "ACS Synthetic Biology". ACS Publications.
  33. "Asimov". asimov.io.
  34. "PivotBio".
  35. "Synthetic Biology: Engineering Evolution and Design (SEED)". 2017-08-28.
  36. "Asimov - Intelligent Design".
  37. "De Novo DNA".
  38. "Bolt Threads".
  39. "Pivot Bio".
  40. "Industrial Microbes".
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