Wei Bai Email & Phone Number

Pleasanton, California, US

Emeryville, CA, US

• Engineer metabolic pathways to produce natural products in microbial cell factories
• Optimized metabolic pathways for two molecules to improve the yield, productivity, and tier
• Conducted library screening using a competitive assay to identify the bottleneck of production
• Designed DNA constructs using computational tools for optimizing metabolic pathways
• Analyzed omics/fermentation data to inform rational pathway designs
• Proposed and executed strategy that led to a 70% reduction in byproduct to target product ratio

St. Louis, MO, US

• Engineered Rhodopseudomoman palustris TIE-1 for n-butanol production
• Constructed a plasmid-based n-butanol biosynthesis pathway through DNA assembly
• Prepared cell lysate and performed enzyme activity assays of three enzymes involved in the pathway
• Introduced the biosynthesis pathway into wildtype and different knockout mutants through conjugation and performed RT-qPCR and enzyme activity assays to characterize the heterologous gene expressions
• Tested sixteen cultivation conditions (including microbial electrosynthesis) to investigate optimum carbon, electron, and nitrogen sources
• Hypothesized that substrate availability could be the barrier for n-butanol biosynthesis and tested the hypothesis by generating mutants lacking competing pathways through microbial genome engineering

St. Louis, MO, US

• Course name: Microbiology
• Led discussion for a group of 5 students every week
• Wrote exam questions for all three exams
• Taught one of the lectures (70+ students) as a guest speaker

St. Louis, MO, US

• Course name: DNA manipulationMain responsibility:
• Modified the existing experiment protocol according to the new project
• Explained the experiment protocol to students and supervised students during the experiments

St. Louis, MO, US

• Course name: Unit operation Lab
• Established the experiment protocol for the new instruments
• Explained the experiment protocol to students and supervised students during the experiments

• Market and feasibility assessment of grant proposals
• Examined the commercialization potential of several academic grant proposals
• Ranked the proposals based on the market need, impact, and the potential for market entry
• Compiled written report and presented weekly to teammates with a multi-disciplinary background

Pittsburgh, PA, US

• Investigated relationship between growth rate and plasmid yield in E. coli
• Accumulated three times more plasmid (per gram dry cell weight) by introducing point mutation, shifting the growth temperature, and enabling the cell to use sucrose after glucose is exhausted
• Modified flux balance analysis model of E. coli’s central metabolism, based on an understanding of the microbial metabolism
• Established a linear relationship between growth rate and fluxes in central metabolism using a flux balance analysis model in General Algebraic Modeling System

天津, Tianjin, CN

• Increasing 2-keto-L-gulonic (2-KLG) acid titer in Ketogulonigenium vulgare
• Engineered 2-KLG acid biosynthesis pathways with various enzyme and cofactor combinations
• Tested metabolic and physiological performance by HPLC and enzyme activity assay
• Hypothesized that cofactor amount could be the barrier for optimized production and tested the hypothesis by supply the cofactor the culture, which increased 2-KLG titer by 50%
• Improved cofactor production by 4-fold through overexpression of multiple genes on a plasmid
• Increased the 2-KLG acid titer by 20% using a K. vulgare–Bacillus cereus consortium

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Metabolic Engineering

Master Of Science (Ms), Chemical Engineering

Bachelor Of Science (Bs), Biotechnology