Tim Donohue
Job Description
Tim Donohue is an internationally-recognized expert on bio-and genome-based conversion of renewable resources into valuable products. He is a Past President and current Secretary of the American Society for Microbiology. Donohue is an honorary fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology, has served on numerous federal and international advisory panels, and has led large federally-funded cross-disciplinary graduate training programs. Since 2007, Donohue has served as principal investigator and director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, a renewable fuels and chemicals research center that has trained some 1000 scientists and engineers, made advances contained in over 240 patent applications and 110 licensed technologies, and provided the scientific knowledge that has formed the basis of five start-up companies.
Our laboratory analyzes networks that microbes use to grow or produce bioproducts from renewable resources. To dissect this fundamentally important problem, we dissect genomic, metabolic and regulatory pathways of bacteria that convert renewable resources, such as non-edible lignocellulosic plant biomass, into products that are currently derived from fossil fuels. By mining genome sequence databases, coupling genomic (microarrays & RNAseq, proteomics, metabolomics), computational, molecular and synthetic biology techniques, we define how carbon and energy in nutrients is partitioned into cell growth or formation of bioproducts. The metabolic pathways, signal transduction networks, transcription factors, and signals that control these processes are identified, modeled or re-engineered using mutants, in vitro systems and in silico models. Our long range goals are to understand energy-conserving pathways of societal importance, and to combine computational and experimental systems to design microbial machines with increased capacity to utilize renewable resources, or enable a green production of fuels and chemicals.
