My research focuses on protein engineering to enable microbial production of pharmaceutical-grade chondroitin sulfate (CS), a glycosaminoglycan conventionally extracted from animal cartilage. I apply rational design and host strain engineering to optimize human chondroitin sulfotransferases for enhanced soluble expression and catalytic efficiency in oxidizing E. coli strains. The engineered variants I have developed exhibit multi-fold improvements in expression yield and enzymatic activity, enabling efficient in vitro sulfation of microbially derived chondroitin. This platform addresses key challenges in batch-to-batch consistency and supply chain sustainability, while reducing dependence on animal-derived raw materials. While currently at lab scale, my research establishes a platform for scalable, cell-free biocatalysis and lays the foundation for end-to-end microbial glycosaminoglycan biomanufacturing. Future work will focus on integrating these enzymes with upstream biosynthetic pathways to advance a fully microbial production strategy.
