[Seminar] Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology for the creation of novel plant chemodiversity

Seminar

Title: Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology for the creation of novel plant chemodiversity

Speaker: Paul Christou

Affiliation: Applied Plant Biotechnology Laboratory, University of Lleida

Short Biography

Paul Christou has a BS degree in Chemistry and a PhD in Plant Biochemistry from University College London. He worked as senior scientist at Agracetus Inc., Madison, WI, USA, and was head of Molecular Biotechnology Unit at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK. Later he headed the Crop Genetics and Biotechnology Department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biotechnology and Applied Ecology, at Aachen/Schmallenberg, Germany.

He is currently at Universitat de Lleida as ICREA Research Professor and he is head of the Applied Plant Biotechnology Laboratory and Director of the Agrotecnio CERCA Center, Lleida.

For the past several years his group has have been investigating the organization of foreign genes in important crops such as maize, rice and wheat and its impact on transgene expression levels and stability. Applied aspects of the research include production of high value recombinant pharmaceuticals (vaccines and antibodies) in plants for use in human health and veterinary medicine; engineering crop plants for enhanced nutrition and novel strategies of sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture using transgenic approaches, all with emphasis on developing countries, poverty alleviation and food security. The group is heavily involved in training and capacity building in the area of plant biotechnology focusing on developing countries. More recently they have been focusing on multigene, multipathway engineering in plants and the development of tools and methodology for the application of synthetic biology to major crop plants.

Paul has an outstanding publication track record, including 5 issued patents and 8 pending. He is Chief Editor of “Molecular Breeding” and “Transgenic Research” and he is member of the Editorial Advisory Board of several others including Plant Journal.