Education

• Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 2019
• B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 2013

Previous appointments

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Medical School, Department of Genetics, 2019-2021

Research Statement

Life has leveraged a finite set of building blocks in constructing biomolecules. Carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids possess complex chemical properties that emerge from just a few unique monomeric units. The Marchand lab aims to utilize fundamental approaches in synthetic biology, chemical biology, biosynthesis, and biomolecular engineering for reprogramming life. The goal is to both extend the amino acid, nucleic acid, and carbohydrates building blocks available in living systems for biosynthesis and to use newly expanded metabolism for producing biomolecules with unique chemical and physical properties. By combining natural product discovery with biomolecular engineering, we will leverage biology and biocatalysts to produce new-to-nature molecules. Our mission: to engineer organisms and enzymes that will support the production of next-generation biochemicals and biomolecules.

Select publications

1. Marchand, J. A.; Neugebauer, M. E.; Ing, M. C.; Lin, C.-I.; Pelton, J.; Chang, M. C. Y. Discovery of a Pathway for Terminal-Alkyne Amino Acid Biosynthesis. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1020-y.
2. Neugebauer, M. E.; Sumida, K. H.; Pelton, J. G.; McMurry, J. L.; Marchand, J. A.; Chang, M. C. Y. A Family of Radical Halogenases for the Engineering of Amino-Acid-Based Products. Nat. Chem. Biol. 2019, 15 (October), 1009–1016. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-019-0355-x.
3. Marchand, J. A.; Smela, M. D. P.; Jordan, T. H. H.; Narasimhan, K.; Church, G. M. TBDB : A Database of Structurally Annotated T-Box Riboswitch : tRNA Pairs. Nucleic Acids Res. 2020, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa721.

Honors & awards

• Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2016)
• Chancellor Fellowship, UC Berkeley (2013)

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