People

Reem obtained her PhD in Biotechnology from the University of Manchester under the supervision of Prof. Mark Ashe and Prof. Chris Grant. During her PhD and a subsequent postdoc in Mark Ashe’s lab she engineered S. cerevisiae strains to produce butanol by introducing the ABE pathway from bacteria into yeast, applying metabolic engineering and synthetic biology strategies to enhance butanol production, and continued that work as a research associate in Mark Ashe’s lab. Reem joined the lab of Prof. Patrick Cai in 2018 as a postdoctoral research associate. Reem is currently working on Sc3.0 project and genome minimization via SCRaMbLE. She is constructing and characterizing artificial new essential chromosome in the Sc2.0 synthetic strain. In her free time, she enjoys working as a volunteer in different charities. Reem loves reading, painting, cooking, travelling and exploring life.

Kewin joined the group of Professor Patrick Cai in 2019 as a postdoctoral research associate. He performed his PhD at the University Aix-Marseille, France, under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Paul Bourdineaud and Dr. Christelle Adam-Guillermin, aiming at integrating the epigenetic response in the field of radioecotoxicology. He then joined in 2017 the research team lead by Dr. Jean-Paul di Rago, France, to work on the nuclear relocation of mitochondrial genes in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
His current research aims at implementing a fully synthetic, size-reduced and functional mitochondrial genome in S. cerevisiae by removing the presumably non-essential inter- and intragenic sequences, representing more than 80% of the mitochondrial genome size. Kewin truly believes that mitochondria play a central role in eukaryotic cell’s adaptive capabilities and evolution.
In his spare time, Kewin enjoys learning about psychology, playing guitar and cooking.

Mark joined the Cai Lab in 2022 as a computational post-doc. He completed his PhD at Queen’s University Belfast, under the supervision of Professor Paulo Prodohl, which entailed a Population Genomics approach to managing European oyster populations. Mark’s interests are in computational tools to assist the design-build-test-learn cycles of synthetic biology and genomics projects. Mark enjoys cycling, reading and watching science-fiction.