Achievement

In 2008, Prof. Susan Muller and IGERT trainee Rebecca Dylla-Spears (Chemical Engineering) began an interdisciplinary collaboration with Linda Jen-Jacobson and her student Jacqueline Townsend in the Dept. of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. They have shared with us a mutant enzyme they created, and we are using it as a novel biosensor. This collaboration was a critical step in the advancement of Dylla-Spears’ research to develop a single-molecule assay for the detection of specific sequences in genomic DNA. The Jen-Jacobson group’s mutant enzyme produces far better yields than the native enzyme we had been working with, which has allowed the trainee to progress from the biosensor development phase of her project to the sequence detection phase.