J. Christopher Anderson, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley.
His research is focused on developing the foundational technologies and applications for synthetic biology, with an emphasis on advanced DNA assembly, computer-aided manufacture, and therapeutic organisms.
With broad research interests in applications and foundational technologies for synthetic biology, his Anderson lab works on both wetlab and computational projects. Chris has been the faculty advisor for the Berkeley iGEM program for the past 5 years including Clotho’s winning 2008 and 2009 teams. He became an active programmer and project manager for Clotho beginning in 2010.
Chris coauthored An Expanded Eukaryotic Genetic Code, Adding Amino Acids with Novel Reactivity to the Genetic Code of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Environmentally Controlled Invasion of Cancer Cells by Engineered Bacteria, Generation of a Bacterium with a 21 Amino Acid Genetic Code, An Expanded Genetic Code with a Functional Quadruplet Codon, Environmental Signal Integration by a Modular AND Gate, Gene Synthesis Demystified, and An archaebacteria-derived glutamyl-tRNA synthetase and tRNA pair for unnatural amino acid mutagenesis of proteins in Escherichia coli.
Chris joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 2007 after earning his Ph.D from the Scripps Research Institute and completing postdoctoral work at UC Berkeley. His work was recognized by Technology Review with the TR35 Award in 2007 and by Synthetic Biology 2.0 with its Best Application Award in 2006.
Watch Synthetic Biology: Treating Cancer with E. Coli — 1 of 2 and Synthetic Biology: Treating Cancer with E. Coli — 2 of 2. Read Scientists honored for scientific and technological innovation. Read his OpenWetWare profile.