People

Sarah Klass, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow in the Keasling Lab at UC Berkeley and the Joint Bioenergy Institute. Additionally, she serves as a lecturer for the Alt: Meat Challenge Course through the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology at UC Berkeley. With a chemistry and chemical biology background, her focus has been on chemically and genetically modifying natural protein structures for advanced material and biological functions. During her Ph.D. in the Francis lab at UC Berkeley, Sarah studied the impact of sequence modification on intrinsically disordered proteins’ self-assembling properties to develop a new class of bioderived and biodegradable protein-based materials with unique functions. In the Keasling Lab, Sarah works on engineering polyketide synthetases (PKSs) in bacterial hosts to bio-manufacture small molecule monomers that can be polymerized into recyclable 3D plastics. Additionally, she has worked to genetically engineer Aspergillus oryzae, the filamentous fungi associated with the production of sake and miso, to produce novel compounds and enzymes with applications in food and waste upcycling.