Associate Professor Patrick Lee is visiting BioZone from City University of Hong Kong and will be giving a seminar on Monday 17th September, 2018 at 4:00 pm in WB407. His current work in Hong Kong focuses on microbial community (i.e., indoor built environment microbiome, anaerobic digestion, and latest work on methane oxidation).
Please reach out to vinthiya.param@utoronto.ca if you would like to set a time to meet him.
Hope you can all join the seminar at 4:00 pm in WB407 on Monday 17th September 2018.
Tapping into Methanogenesis and Methane Oxidation for Renewable Energy and Biobased Chemicals
Patrick Lee, PhD
School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong
4:00 pm – Monday 17th September 2018 – WB407
Abstract
As we strive towards a sustainable society, it is important to explore different renewable feedstock to synthesize fuels and chemicals. Recently, methane is emerging as a promising alternative feedstock. Methane can be produced from anaerobic digestion, which is a mature technology, but we still have much to learn about the microbial communities catalyzing the bioprocess. In the first part of this seminar, results from a multi-omics (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metaproteomics) study of anaerobic digestion communities of cellulose and xylan will be discussed. Besides using methane as fuels, biotechnology can be applied to transform C1 compounds to various chemicals for industrial uses. In order to develop the C1 platform, we need a better understanding of the metabolism of the methylotrophic bacteria. In the second part of the seminar, results from an in-depth sequence analysis of methane monooxygenase, the key enzyme responsible for the conversion of methane to methanol, will be presented. In this study, the genomes of all methanotrophic isolates and genomes extracted from metagenomes of different environmental sources were examined. The analysis yielded interesting observations regarding the evolutionary history and codon usage of methane monooxygenase, which could have important implications for engineering methanotrophs and other bacteria.
Bio
Dr. Patrick Lee is an Associate Professor and the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the School of Energy and Environment at City University of Hong Kong. He received his BS degree in chemical engineering from Queen’s University in Canada in 2001, and his MS and PhD degrees in environmental engineering from University of California, Berkeley in 2002 and 2007, respectively. From 2008 to 2010, he carried out post-doctoral research, also at University of California, Berkeley. He started his independent career in 2011. Dr. Lee is the recipient of awards such as the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Post-doctoral Fellowship, World Cultural Council Special Recognition Award and Bioenergy Society of Singapore Achievement Award. His research group applies multi-omics tools in a systems biology framework to study topics in microbiology and microbiome for applications in the energy and environmental areas.
