The Nair lab is moving to a new research space! (Jun 19 – 23)
We are moving from our current location in SciTech to the newly constructed Science and Engineering Complex (SEC). The move will not only double our research space but will also enable more seamless collaborations with members from the Departments of Biology and Biomedical Engineering.

Pictures from the move:

The Nair lab goes to Boston Bacterial Meeting! (Jun 15 – 16)
As always, there was a great set of talks and posters at the 23rd annual BBM! Todd presented a poster on his recent B&B publication! See pictures below:

Bonus: pictured with Todd here is Prof. Katie Berry (Mt. Holyoke College), a former colleague of Prof. Nair from the Hochschild lab.

The Nair lab visits Medford High School for the 3rd year in a row! (Jun 12 – 14)
As part of our goals to increase the visibility of engineering and synthetic biology, we (Bruno, Todd, Zac, Prof. Nair) visited Ms. Audrey Feitor Carmosino‘s Honors Biology class at MHS. We engaged the students using a CSI-type forensic investigation, over three 1-hour classes. We think we made a real difference.

We’d also like to thank Karen O’Hagan (Tufts Chemistry Outreach Specialist) for her immense help!

For more information on the modules, visit the Outreach page.

Pictures from the visit (thanks, Karen O’Hagan, for capturing these moments!):

REU students arrive!
The lab welcomes REU students Emily Chicklis (Simmons College) and Karlos Zachary (U of Minnesota, Duluth) to the lab! Emily will work on a project in collaboration with Prof. Soha Hassoun and Karlos in collaboration with Prof. Xiaocheng Jiang.

Cassidy Hubert graduates with BS in ChBE!
Cassidy leaves the lab after almost 2 years. We wish her the best in her future career!

Joe’s review article accepted for publication in Current Opinion in Microbiology!
The review article Joe wrote with Matt Waller from the Chase Beisel lab at NC State is accepted for publication in Current Opinion in Microbiology! Congrats, Joe! (link)

Todd’s paper is accepted for publication in Biotechnology & Bioengineering!
Todd’s manuscript on engineering a consortium of E. coli to consume hexoses is accepted for publication in Biotechnology & Bioengineering! Congrats, Todd! (link)

Prof. Nair talks to biology students at Pine Manor College (Chestnut Hill, MA) about Zac’s and Joe’s projects on gut microbiota engineering (May 2).

Thanks to Dr. Katie Mattaini of the Sackler’s TEACRS program for the invitation!

Congrats to Todd for completing his thesis proposal (May 4)!

Jeremy’s paper on predicting abortive RNA in E. coli is out!

I hope this is a first of many more peer-reviewed articles authored by an undergrad at Tufts! The work was a collaboration with Prof. Soha Hassoun (Tufts CS) and was sponsored by Tufts Summer Scholar program. Here’s a link to the paper in Genomics!

Congrats to Bruno for completing his thesis proposal (May 31)!

The Nair lab goes to San Francisco, CA for the ACS BIOT meeting (Apr 2-6)!

Had a great mini-reunion dinner with the past and present members of the Zhao lab (UIUC)! Members of Shao (Iowa State), Wu (New Hampshire), and Nair labs also joined in.

Bruno presents on engineering PGA synthetase.

Zac presents on engineering lactobacilli and PAL enzymes.

The Nair lab members participate in the first ChBE Graduate Symposium (Apr 7)!

Todd and Venkatesh present posters on their respective projects!

Prof. Nair presents a talk on Joe and Zac’s work at the Tufts Microbiome Interest Group (Apr 11)! Thanks to Prof. Jimmy Crott for inviting me!

Congrats to Zac for completing his thesis proposal (April 14)!

Prof. Nair presents a talk on Joe’s and Zac’s work on engineering the gut microbiota at The World Orphan Drug Congress in Washington DC (Apr 19-21)!

First paper out of the lab!

Congrats to Neda (co-advised with Prof. Soha Hassoun)! Her manuscript titled “Selection Finder (SelFi): A Computational Metabolic Engineering Tool to Enable Directed Evolution of Enzymes” was just accepted by Metabolic Engineering Communications. You can find the paper here.

Prof. Nair is appointed an adjunct position at Tufts Medical School!

Thanks to Prof. Ira Herman for championing my adjunct appointment at the CMDB (Cell, Molecular & Developmental Biology) program at the Tufts Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences!

First seminar of the year

Thanks so much to Prof. Ira Herman for inviting me to give a talk at Tufts Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences CMDB program!