Phd Candidate
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, Virginia
John Bryant is a fifth year PhD Candidate in Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. He is a
member of the Biofoundry Lab, where he has developed a specialty in lab automation and synthetic
biology. John has led development efforts for his lab’s portfolio of open-source lab automation software
tools. He released AssemblyTron in 2022 for automating DNA assembly with OT-2 liquid handling robots.
More recently, John released TidyTron, which is a library of OT-2 protocol scripts for cleaning single use
lab plastics. John also studies the auxin signaling pathway and how environment, hormones, and other
stimuli regulate plant growth. To do this, he uses a synthetic biology approach where minimal auxin
pathways are expressed in yeast to recapitulate and engineer pathway dynamics. One of John’s primary
goals is to scale automated workflows to accelerate the Design-Build-Test-Learn cycles that drive
synthetic biology.
(CS-9-5) Blazing a trail towards orthogonal auxin transcriptional regulation
Sunday, August 6, 2023
4:50 PM – 5:10 PM EDT