2025 Baxter Symposium Keynote Address

Keynote Presenter: Dr. Ashty S. Karim, Northwestern University

Industrial biotechnology is one of the most attractive, emerging approaches to address the demand for carbon-negative technologies posed by the accelerating climate crisis. Unfortunately, biotechnology design-build-test cycles—iterations of re-engineering organisms to test new sets of biological combinations—remains costly, risky, and slow. One key limitation is that cellular survival objectives are often diametrically opposed to the objectives of engineers. Cell-free synthetic biology allows us to rethink how we meet this global challenge by facilitating rapid building of prototypes with biology. Using cell-free technologies, we can conduct precise, complex biomolecular transformations in cell lysates without living, intact organisms. In other words, cocktails of cellular machinery harvested from cells that are broken open can be used to build biological systems and processes. By harnessing the advantages of cell-free synthetic biology, we’ve developed in vitro approaches to design, build, and test enzymes and pathways to inform cellular design.

In this talk, I will describe our efforts to reimagine R&D for industrial biotechnology. I will describe the scientific developments that informed the design of sustainable bioprocesses currently being used at LanzaTech, a Skokie-based biotechnology company. In addition, I will discuss our efforts at Northwestern University to define how we teach synthetic biology and train future leaders of the field. Throughout the talk I will sprinkle in a little about my backstory, the culture I try to create, and how I try to bridge the world of education and research.