Taek Soon Lee
Biochemist Staff Scientist
Research Interests
My research group at the Joint BioEnergy Institute is focusing on identifying potential drop-in biofuels and building and optimizing the metabolic pathway to produce these target fuels in microbes. Our major target fuels are isoprenoid-based compounds that can be alternative to gasoline, jet, and diesel fuels. To improve fuel production titer and yield, we study the producing host and fuel biosynthetic pathway intensively using various advanced analytical tools such as targeted proteomics, metabolomics, and transcriptomics; and engineer the metabolic pathway in the producing host using synthetic biology tools.
Recent Publications
Related News
Congratulations to Biosciences Area Director’s Award Recipients
Numerous Biosciences Area personnel are among the 2021 Berkeley Lab Director’s Awards honorees. This annual program recognizes outstanding contributions by employees to all facets of Lab activities. A complete list of winners can be found here. The 10th annual Director’s Awards ceremony will take place on November 18 at noon.
Biosciences Area Projects Receive Technology Commercialization Funding Awards from Department of Energy
Two projects from the Biosciences Area were awarded $1 million from the DOE’s Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) to further collaborative research with industry partners. The research will enable rapid strain engineering for the production of biofuels and bioproducts from low-cost gas feedstock, and produce a new aviation biofuel precursor from cellulosic biomass.
JBEI/BSE Paper Among PLOS ONE Top 10% Most Cited Articles
A paper by Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) researchers has been ranked among the top 10% most cited PLOS ONE articles. “A Thermophilic Ionic liquid-tolerant Cellulase Cocktail for the Production of Cellulosic Biofuels” published in 2012 has already been viewed 8,871 times and cited 50 times as of today. The paper reports the development of an Ionic Liquid-tolerant cellulase cocktail by combining thermophilic bacterial glycoside hydrolases produced by a mixed consortia with recombinant glycoside hydrolases.
