Aditya M. Kunjapur

Thomas Willing Early Career Assistant Professor

Education 

• Post-Doctorate – 2018 Harvard Medical School
• Doctorate – 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Bachelors – 2010 University of Texas at Austin

About Aditya M. Kunjapur

The goal of our lab is to use synthetic biology approaches to investigate how microbes can create and harness building blocks that do not commonly appear in nature to generate products that exhibit enhanced functionality. Products of interest include therapeutics, vaccines, chemicals, and materials.

Some questions that interest us are: What are useful chemical functional groups that we impart upon small molecules or within proteins using enzymatic catalysis, metabolic engineering, and genetic code expansion technologies? Will small molecules that contain unusual functional groups be orthogonal to endogenous cellular processes, will they be consumed by the cell, and/or will they be toxic? Will cells transport these molecules across cell membranes? How could we engineer cells to overcome potential challenges with orthogonality, toxicity, or transport? Advancements in synthetic biology, genome engineering, genetic code expansion, and natural products discovery allow our lab to investigate where we can push the boundaries of what is possible.

Select Publications (h3)

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Patents (h3)

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Awards (h3)

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Research Areas 

Synthetic biology using expanded biochemistry: Protein engineering via non-standard amino acids; metabolic engineering via unusual functional groups; selective proteolysis via engineered protein quality control