Will Holtz

Will Holtz

Current Research Projects

Optimization of engineered biosynthetic pathways

Research Summary

Natural biosynthetic pathways make frequent use of negative feedback to optimize the expression of enzymes. Few engineered biosynthetic pathways have included negative feedback because the cost of implementation is high. Instead, engineered biosynthetic pathways are usually designed with static optimiztaion methods that are easy to perturb and thus result in a non-optimized system. I am working to develop a toolkit that will allow negative feedback to integrated into engineered biosynthetic pathways with a much lower implementation cost than previously possible.

Background

Education

• BS Electrical and Computer Engineering

Carnegie Mellon, 2000

Publications

• Zendejas, F.J.; Srinivasan, U.; Holtz, W.J.; Keasling, J.D.; Howe, R.T., "Microfluidic generation of tunable emulsions for templated monodisperse silica," Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems, 2005. Digest of Technical Papers. TRANSDUCERS '05. The 13th International Conference on , vol.2, no.pp. 1473- 1476 Vol. 2, 5-9 June 2005, DOI 10.1109/SENSOR.2005.1497361.
• Michel M. Maharbiz, William J. Holtz, Roger T. Howe, Jay D. Keasling, "Microbioreactor arrays with parametric control for high-throughput experimentation," Biotechnology and Bioengineering, vol. 85(4), pg. 376-381, 2004, DOI 10.1002/bit.10835.
• Maharbiz, M.M.; Holtz, W.J.; Sharifzadeh, S.; Keasling, J.D.; Howe, R.T., "A microfabricated electrochemical oxygen generator for high-density cell culture arrays," Microelectromechanical Systems, Journal of , vol.12, no.5, pp. 590- 599, Oct. 2003, DOI 10.1109/JMEMS.2003.815828.
• M.M. Maharbiz, W.J. Holtz, S. Sharifzadeh, J.D. Keasling and R.T. Howe, "A Microfabricated Electrochemical Oxygen Generator for High-Density Cell Culture Arrays," in Solid-State Sensor, Actuator, and Microsystems Workshop, 2002, pp. 259-264.
• J. Yang, W. Holtz, W. Yang and M. Tue Vo, "An adaptive multimodal interface for wireless applications," in Second International Symposium on Wearable Computers, 1998, pp. 172-173.

Presentations

• W.J. Holtz, A.S. Shaikh, J.D. Keasling and R.T. Howe, "In Vitro Complex Silica Structure Formation Using a Microfabricated Artificial Silica Deposition Vesicle," in 17th North American Diatom Society Symposium, 2003. (poster presentation)
• M.M. Maharbiz, W.J. Holtz, R.T. Howe and J.D. Keasling, "Microbioreactor Arrays with Parmetric Control for High-Throughput Experimentation," in Biocehmical Engineering XIII, 2003. (poster presentation)

Honors

• Intel's Robert N. Noyce Graduate Research Fellowship