Congratulation to Dr. Gol Mohammad Dorrazehi

On January 17th, 2022, Dr. Dorrazehi became the newest member of our team to successfully defend his PhD thesis. His thesis title is “The catalytic activity of a DD-peptidase impairs its evolutionary conversion into a  β-lactamase“, which is focused on “challenges in in-vivo directed evolution”, to build on previous works of our laboratory to probe the trade-offs between activity and evolvability of enzymes. In the thesis, he explored intra- and intergenic mechanisms to bypass fitness costs associated with activity of enzymes, e.g. he used the ability of CRISPR/Cas9 for creating genomic libraries to lower the fitness cost. The results of his thesis clearly demonstrate that fitness cost issues are multi-factorial and that an initial careful attention to every biological parameter may be crucial for the success of a directed evolution campaign, especially when dealing with potentially dangerous enzymatic activity such as a hydrolase.

We wish you all the best for the future!