Prof. David Savage
Title: Mechanisms and Engineering of Photosynthesis
Bio:
Dave is a Professor in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and an Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Research in the Savage Lab focuses on understanding and engineering two of the most important biochemical systems found in nature: genome editing and carbon fixing enzyme machineries. Ultimately, this works seeks to develop enabling genome editing technology and apply it for improving photosynthetic CO2 fixation in plants. Dave’s research has been recognized with the DOE Early Career Program Award, an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. Dave is also an enthusiastic supporter of science capacity building and translation, and he is a co-creator of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory course on synthetic biology, co-creator of the African Plant Breeding Academy CRISPR Course, a founder of Scribe Therapeutics, and continues to help manage the family farm in Iowa.
Abstract:
The sequence-function landscape of a protein is the connection of genotype and phenotype at a molecular level. Although abstract, this concept has many real-world applications. Mapping and predicting this space would improve our basic science understanding of macromolecular function in the cell, clarify the role of genetic variation in causing disease, and lead to our ability to design new proteins with enhanced activity, stability, and specificity. The goal of our work is to develop experimental methods to systematically explore the mutational landscape of important enzymes such ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase / oxygenase, the principal CO2-fixing enzyme in the biosphere. A related effort is to create new types of assays that yield robust measurements of biochemical parameters, rather than relative measurements which are typically measured out of convenience. Our work thus seeks to couple this data, mechanistic studies, and machine learning tools to develop state of the art methods for predicting and engineering protein function. In the long term, our goal is to apply this knowledge for improving photosynthetic assimilation of CO2 in plants.
Keywords: Enzyme catalysis, genome editing, protein engineering
Host: Prof. Tina Wang