Dr. Zhen Wang

Dr. Zhen Wang was a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Christoph Benning. Her thesis was on lipid import into the chloroplast by the TGD-ABC transporter complex. As such she characterized the TGD4 protein of Arabidopsis and conducted the biochemical and functional analysis of this protein. Dr. Wang discovered that the TGD4 protein specifically binds phosphatidic acid. She also demonstrated that it is associated with the outer chloroplast envelope membrane where it likely interacts with the ER. These findings have led to our current working hypothesis suggesting that TGD4 extracts a lipid from the ER membrane and transfers it to the TGD1,2,3 complex of the inner envelope membrane.

During Dr. Wang’s postdoctoral time at Berkeley, she worked on the synthetic biology of fatty acyl production in E. coli in the laboratory of Dr. Michelle C.Y. Chang. A key element limiting yield is a medium chain specific thiolase, and she identified novel isoforms and optimized this enzyme using clever engineering approaches. In addition, she identified novel isoforms of 3-ketoreductases, dehydratases and thioesterases involved in aycl-chain formation. This work has important practical applications.

Dr. Wang is currently an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Biological Sciences at SUNY-Buffalo. She is applying her knowledge in synthetic biology and biochemistry towards the manufacturing of natural products in bacterial and yeast hosts, especially medicinal compounds found in plants. She is applying state-of-the-art approaches to identify missing enzymes in the respective plant pathways. Her long-term goal is “to provide alternative solutions for the sustainable and economical production of plant-based medicines through metabolic engineering and synthetic biology.”

Her peer recognition as a recipient of the Arthur Neish Young Investigator Award by the Phytochemistry Society of North America puts Dr. Wang into a relatively small group of scholars, many of whom became leaders in the field of plant metabolism and synthetic biology.