Research Focus
Anup Singh is the Principal Associate Director for Engineering at at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA. . In this role, he leads an organization of approximately 2,700 engineering professionals with responsibility for the full breadth of the Laboratory’s engineering needs to support Laboratory’s missions in Nuclear Deterrence, Countering WMD Threats, and Climate and Energy Security.
He is internationally recognized for his scientific leadership in microfluidics and has published more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, delivered more than 150 presentations at national and international conferences, and his inventions have led to more than 40 patents and patent applications. Many of his inventions have been licensed to companies engaged in medical diagnostics and sensor technology development.
His group’s aim is to create specialized technologies to support the scientific research in feedstock development, biomass degradation, and fuel conversion for efficient conversion of biomass to biofuels. These technologies include an integrated microfluidic platform for metabolic engineering of organisms that integrate DNA assembly, transformation, and cell culture. His group is collaborating with Hector Garcia-Martin’s group to integrate these high-throughput experimental platforms with AI/ML towards developing self-driving laboratories for enabling predictive metabolic engineering.
Projects
Microfluidic and Array-based assays
- Adapt electrophoretic glycan analysis to a commercial microfluidic instrument and demonstrate screening of GT and GH enzymes in 96-well format.
- Develop a droplet microfluidic system for highly-parallel analysis. Demonstrate in this platform a) screening of multiple cellulose cocktails using insoluble biomass with Deconstruction and b) assembly of genes using multiple cloning methods with Fuels Synthesis.
Publications
- “Perspectives for self-driving labs in synthetic biology”, Current Opinion in Biotechnology (2023)
- “Scalable and automated CRISPR-based strain engineering using droplet microfluidics”, Microsyst Nanoeng (2022)
- “De novo DNA synthesis using polymerase-nucleotide conjugates,” Nat Biotechnol (2018)
- “Rapid characterization of the activities of lignin-modifying enzymes based on nanostructure-initiator mass spectrometry (NIMS),” Biotechnol Biofuels (2018)
- “Droplet Microfluidics for Synthetic Biology,” Lab Chip (2017)
- “A droplet-to-digital (D2D) microfluidic device for single cell assays”, Lab Chip (2015)
- “A Versatile Microfluidic Device for Automating Synthetic Biology”, ACS Synth Biol (2015)
- “Pressure stabilizer for reproducible picoinjection in droplet microfluidic systems”, Lab Chip (2014)
- “Versatile on-demand droplet generation for controlled encapsulation”, Biomicrofluidics (2014)
- “Rapid Kinetic Characterization of Glycosyl Hydrolases Based on Oxime Derivatization and Nanostructure-Initiator Mass Spectrometry (NIMS)”, ACS Chem Biol (2014)
- “One-pot, microscale cell-free enzyme expression and screening”, Methods Mol Biol (2014)
- “Droplet-based microfluidic platform for heterogeneous enzymatic assays.”, Lab Chip (2013)
- “A universal flow cytometry assay for screening carbohydrate-active enzymes using glycan microspheres.”, Chem Communications (2013)
- “Acoustic deposition with NIMS as a high-throughput enzyme activity assay”, Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry (2012)
- ” Nanostructure-initiator mass spectrometry (NIMS) for the analysis of enzyme activities”, Curr protoc chem biol (2012)
- “Encoding substrates with mass tags to resolve stereospecific reactions using Nimzyme”, Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry (2012)
- “High-throughput enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass via in-situ regeneration”, Bioresource Technology (2012)
- “Colloid-based multiplexed screening for plant biomass-degrading glycoside hydrolase activities in microbial communities”, Energy and Environmental Science (2011)
- “Microfluidic Glycosyl Hydrolase Screening for Biomass-to-Biofuel Conversion”, Analytical Chemistry (2010)
- “A Microscale Platform For Integrated Cell-Free Expression And Activity Screening Of Cellulases”, Journal of Proteome Research (2010)
- “Supramolecular Self-Assembled Chaos: Polyphenolic Lignin’s Barrier to Cost-Effective Lignocellulosic Biofuels”, Molecules (2010)
- “Hitherto Unrecognized Fluorescence Properties of Coniferyl Alcohol”, Molecules (2010)
- “Spectroscopic Analyses of the Biofuels-Critical Phytochemical Coniferyl Alcohol and Its Enzyme-Catalyzed Oxidation Products”, Molecules (2009)