Postdoctoral Appointee
Fang Liu’s work at Sandia focuses on developing biochemical techniques for biomass conversion and biofuel/chemical production. Specifically, she is working on the bioconversion of algae biomass into advanced biofuels and valorization of lignin to produce value-added chemicals using metabolic engineering and synthetic biology approaches.
Education
Bachelor’s Degree: Environmental Engineering, Beijing Normal University-China (2001-2005)
Master’s Degree: Environmental Engineering, Tsinghua University-China (2005-2007)
Doctoral Degree: Chemical Engineering, University of Delaware (2007-2013)
Postdoctoral Fellowships:
- Novozymes, Inc. (2013-2016)
- Sandia National Laboratories (2016-Present)
Liu received a M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) in 2007 and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of Delaware (Newark, DE) in 2013. Her Ph.D. work focused on developing synthetic protein scaffolds suitable for protein purification, biocatalyst assembly, and bio-mediated nanomaterial synthesis. After she graduated in 2013, she worked for two and half years at Novozymes, Inc. which is a global biotechnology company with a research center in Davis, CA. She made major contributions to a bioenergy research project partially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to establish a synthetic biology based platform for rapid and cost-effective screening of biomass enzymes and deliver tailored enzyme cocktails for more efficient cellulosic ethanol production. She has 16 peer-reviewed journal publications, 3 patent applications, and numerous conference presentations.
Selected Publications
Weihua Wu*, Fang Liu* and Seema Singh. "Toward engineering E. coli with an autoregulatory system for lignin valorization." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 115, 2970-2975, 2018. (*Equal contribution)
Fang Liu, Weihua Wu, Mary B. Tran-Gyamfi, James D. Jaryenneh, Xun Zhuang and Ryan W. Davis. "Bioconversion of distillers’ grains hydrolysates to advanced biofuels by an Escherichia coli co-culture." Microbial Cell Factories, 16, 192, 2017.
Fang Liu, Scott Banta, and Wilfred Chen. "Functional assembly of a multi-enzyme methanol oxidation cascade on a surface-displayed trifunctional scaffold for enhanced NADH production." Chemical Communications, 49, 3766-3768, 2013.
Fang Liu, Shen-Long Tsai, Bhawna Madan, and Wilfred Chen. "Engineering a high-affinity scaffold for non-chromatographic protein purification via intein-mediated cleavage." Biotechnology and Bioengineering, 109, 2829-2835, 2012.
Fang Liu, Seung Hyun Kang, Young-In Lee, Yong-ho Choa, Ashok Mulchandani, Nosang V. Myung, and Wilfred Chen. "Enzyme mediated synthesis of phytochelatin-capped CdS nanocrystals." Applied Physics Letters, 97, 123703, 2010.
Patents
Paul V. Harris, and Fang Liu. Polypeptides having beta-xylosidase activity and polynucleotides encoding same. 2017, WO2017019491 A1.
Paul V. Harris, Sumati Hasani, and Fang Liu. Polypeptides having arabinofuranosidase activity and polynucleotides encoding same. 2017, WO2017019490 A9.
Paul V. Harris, Martin S. Borchert, Sumati Hasani, and Fang Liu. Polypeptides having xylanase activity and polynucleotides encoding same. 2017, WO 2017019515 A1