Our lab turns yeast into low-cost, high-density factories for secreting human proteins. We use synthetic biology to create genome-editing tools (CRISPR, yeast surface display), systems biology to uncover the mechanisms that limit folding, glycosylation, and secretion, bioinformatics to mine large RNA-seq and single-cell datasets, and computational biology to model metabolism and prioritize targets. Together, these approaches let us rapidly iterate from hypothesis to engineered strain to process.
Relevant Papers
Yang Y, Dalvie NC, Brady JR, Naranjo CA, Lorgeree T, Rodriguez-Aponte SA, Johnston RS, Tracey MK, Elenberger CM, Lee E, Tié M, Love KR, Love JC. Adaptation of Aglycosylated Monoclonal Antibodies for Improved Production in Komagataella phaffii. Biotechnol Bioeng. 2025 Feb;122(2):361-372. doi: 10.1002/bit.28878. Epub 2024 Nov 14.PMID: 39543843.
Dalvie NC, Lorgeree TR, Yang Y, Rodriguez-Aponte SA, Whittaker CA, Hinckley JA, Clark JJ, Del Rosario AM, Love KR, Love JC. CRISPR-Cas9 knockout screen informs efficient reduction of the Komagataella phaffii secretome. Microb Cell Fact. 2024 Jul 31;23(1):217. doi: 10.1186/s12934-024-02466-2. PMID: 39085844; PMCID: PMC11293167.
Nagar G, Jain S, Rajurkar M, Lothe R, Rao H, Majumdar S, Gautam M, Rodriguez-Aponte SA, Crowell LE, Love JC, Dandekar P, Puranik A, Gairola S, Shaligram U, Jain R. Large-Scale Purification and Characterization of Recombinant Receptor-Binding Domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Expressed in Yeast. Vaccines (Basel). 2023 Oct 16;11(10):1602. doi: 10.3390/vaccines11101602. PMID: 37897004; PMCID: PMC10610970.
Dalvie NC, Lorgeree T, Biedermann AM, Love KR, Love JC. Simplified Gene Knockout by CRISPR-Cas9-Induced Homologous Recombination. ACS Synth Biol. 2022 Jan 21;11(1):497-501. doi: 10.1021/acssynbio.1c00194. Epub 2021 Dec 9. PMID: 34882409; PMCID: PMC8787811
Dalvie NC, Biedermann AM, Rodriguez-Aponte SA, Naranjo CA, Rao HD, Rajurkar MP, Lothe RR, Shaligram US, Johnston RS, Crowell LE, Castelino S, Tracey MK, Whittaker CA, Love JC. Scalable, methanol-free manufacturing of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain in engineered Komagataella phaffii. Biotechnol Bioeng. 2022 Feb;119(2):657-662. doi: 10.1002/bit.27979. Epub 2021 Nov 15. PMID: 34780057; PMCID: PMC8653030.
Brady JR, Love JC. Alternative hosts as the missing link for equitable therapeutic protein production. Nat Biotechnol. 2021 Apr;39(4):404-407. doi: 10.1038/s41587-021-00884-w.
Lu AE, Maloney AJ, Dalvie NC, Brady JR, Love KR, Love JC, Braatz RD. Modeling of copy number variability in Pichia pastoris. Biotechnol Bioeng. 2021 Feb 2. doi: 10.1002/bit.27698.
Brady JR, Tan MC, Whittaker CA, Colant NA, Dalvie NC, Love KR, Love JC. Identifying Improved Sites for Heterologous Gene Integration Using ATAC-seq. ACS Synth Biol. 2020 Sept. 18. doi: 10.1021/acssynbio.0c00299.
Dalvie NC, Leal J, Whittaker CA, Yang Y, Brady JR, Love KR, Love JC. Host-Informed Expression of CRISPR Guide RNA for Genomic Engineering in Komagataella phaffii. ACS Synth Biol. 2019 Dec 13. doi: 10.1021/acssynbio.9b00372.
Brady JR, Whittaker CA, Tan MC, Kristensen DL 2nd, Ma D, Dalvie NC, Love KR, Love JC. Comparative genome-scale analysis of Pichia pastoris variants informs selection of an optimal base strain. Biotechnol Bioeng. 2019 Oct 26. doi: 10.1002/bit.27209.
Love KR, Dalvie NC, Love JC. The yeast stands alone: the future of protein biologic production. Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2017 Dec 22;53:50-58. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2017.12.010.
Love KR, Shah KA, Whittaker CA, Wu J, Bartlett MC, Ma D, Leeson RL, Priest M, Borowsky J, Young SK, Love JC. Comparative genomics and transcriptomics of Pichia pastoris. BMC Genomics. 2016 Aug 5;17:550. doi: 10.1186/s12864-016-2876-y. Erratum in: BMC Genomics. 2016;17(1):762.