James Bowie

Biography

B.A. Carleton College 1981; Ph.D. MIT 1989; Life Sciences Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow (1989-92); American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow (1992-3); Assistant Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry, UCLA (1993-2000); Associate Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry, UCLA (2000-04); Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry (2004-present); Vice Chair Chemistry & Biochemistry (2013-19); Protein Society Executive Council (2006-12); Protein Society President (20013-15); Editorial Board of Journal of Molecular Biology (2006-19), Biochemistry (2006-), Protein Science (2000-) and Proteins (1997-2005); Advisory Board Swedish Biomembrane Center (2005-10); Co-chair FASEB summer conference on Mol. Biophys. Cell. Membranes (2006&08);. Co-chair Gordon Conference on Proteins (2010&12); Co-chair of Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting on Membrane Protein folding (2013); Founder and co-chair of Gordon Conference of Membrane Protein Folding (2015); Member NIH BBM study section(2006-10): Co-founder of Invizyne Technologies, Inc (2019)

Research

Considerable effort is currently directed toward engineer micro-organisms to produce useful chemicals. The greatest potential environmental benefit of metabolic engineering would be the production of high volume commodity chemicals, such as biofuels. Yet the high yields and rates required for the economic viability of low-value chemicals are particularly hard to achieve in microbes due to the myriad competing biochemical pathways. We are developing an alternative approach, which we call synthetic biochemistry. Synthetic biochemistry throws away the cells and builds biochemical pathways in reaction vessels using complex mixtures of isolated enzymes. As the only pathway in the vessel is the desired transformation, yields can approach 100%. The challenge for synthetic biochemistry is to replace the complex regulatory systems that exist in cells in a simplified form. We have developed systems with production parameters greatly exceeding what has been possible in cells, and have founded a company, Invizyne Technologies, to commercialize the synthetic biology approach.

Selected Publications

Valliere MA, Korman TP, Arbing MA, Bowie JU, A bio-inspired cell free system for cannabinoid production from inexpensive inputs, Nature Chem. Biol., in press

Bowie JU, Sherkhanov S, Korman TP, Valliere MA, Opgenorth P, Liu H, Synthetic Biochemistry: The bio-inspired cell free approach to commodity chemical production, Trends in Biotech., in press

Valliere MA, Korman TP, Woodall NB, Khitrov GA, Taylor RE, Baker D, Bowie JU, A cell-free platform for the prenylation of natural products and application to cannabinoid production, Nature Comm., 10(1):565 (2019)

Opgenorth PH, Korman TP, Bowie JU, A molecular rheostat design that maintains ATP levels needed to drive cell-free synthetic biochemistry systems, Nature Chem. Biol., 13(9):938-942 (2017)

Korman TP, Opgenorth PH, Bowie JU, A synthetic biochemistry platform for cell free production of monoterpenes from glucose, Nature Comm., 8:15526 (2017)

Opgenorth PH, Korman TP, Bowie JU, A synthetic biochemistry module for the production of bio-based chemicals from glucose, Nature Chem. Biol., 12(6):393-5 (2016)