Nathan Nguyen ’27, Chemical and Biological Engineering

Nathan Nguyen ’27

Major

Chemical and Biological Engineering

Project Title

Purifying Industrial Amylase

Minor(s): Sustainable Energy

Amylase, particularly in its industrial form Termamyl, plays a crucial role in various industries including the food and beverage, detergent, textile, paper, fuel and pharmaceutical industries due to its ability to break down starch into sugars. Common practices in purifying Termamyl such as filtration, centrifugation and precipitation are unsustainable as they have high energy demands, employ hazardous chemicals such as ammonium sulphate, and generate a significant amount of solid and liquid waste, thereby exacerbating greenhouse gas emissions as well as soil and water pollution. I worked on expressing and purifying Termamyl as a target for light-controlled affinity chromatography using OptoMonobodies, a class of synthetic binding proteins controllable by blue light. This method, when scaled up, could provide a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly way to purify Termamyl on an industrial scale. I am very grateful to have met Max, Professor Avalos, as well as other members of the Avalos Lab who guided me through this project and encouraged me to learn and grow over the course of my internship.