Nina Alperovich (Fed)

Nina Alperovich has a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering with 16 years’ experience in Synthetic Biology. For 14 years she worked in the Synthetic Biology Department of the J. Craig Venter Institute. Her work focused on the development of molecular tools and new synthetic biology techniques for recognition of minimal genomes and the creation of the first Synthetic cell.

She assembled the complete synthetic Human Cytomegalovirus, Herpes Simplex Virus 1 and synthesized Hemagglutinin and Neuraminidase genes for Synthetic influenza viruses for development of a new generation of vaccine production.

Nina is recognized as a co-author on several publications and three patents, and she was honored as co-author with the ENI Award for Research and Environment, reported as an unofficial Nobel Prize for energy research for the 2007 paper: “Genome Transplantation in Bacteria: Changing One Species to Another.”

Nina is currently working as a biologist on the Engineering Biology team, where she is interested in the development and implementation of living sensors, and improving the predictability, reliability, and stability of engineered biological systems.

Nina focuses on the development of traceable methods to quantify the signal strength of genetic logic gates and circuits.  She is working to develop fluorescence microscopy methods for single molecule transcript counting. She is also developing a quantitative RT-PCR method to measure the half-life and degradation patterns for mRNA in E. coli. These quantitative mRNA measurements will be an important foundation for improved predictive engineering of gene expression in bacteria.

Selected Publications

• Sanjay Vashee, Timothy B. Stockwell, Nina Alperovich, Evgeniya A. Denisova, Daniel G. Gibson, Kyle C. Cady, Kristofer Miller, Krishna Kannan, Daniel Malouli, Lindsey B. Crawford, Alexander A. Voorhies, Eric Bruening, Patrizia Caposio, Klaus Frühd, Cloning, Assembly, and Modification of the Primary Human Cytomegalovirus Isolate Toledo by Yeast-Based Transformation-Associated Recombination, mSphere, 2017 Oct 05.
• Lauren M. Oldfield, Peter Grzesik, Alexander A. Voorhies, Nina Alperovich, Derek MacMath, Claudia D. Najera, Diya Sabrina Chandra, Sanjana Prasad, Vladimir N. Noskov, Michael G. Montague, Robert M. Friedmand, Prashant J. Desai, Sanjay Vashee, Genome-wide engineering of an infectious clone of herpes simplex virus type 1 using synthetic genomics assembly methods, PNAS, 2017 Aug 25.
• Krishnakumar R, Grose C, Haft DH, Zaveri J, Alperovich N, Gibson DG, Merryman C, Glass J. Simultaneous Non-contiguous Deletions Using Large Synthetic DNA and Site-specific Recombinases. Nucleic Acids Research. 2014 Jun 09.
• P. R. Dormitzer, P. Suphaphiphat, D. G. Gibson, D. E. Wentworth, T. B. Stockwell, M. A. Algire,  N.Alperovich, M. Barro, D. M. Brown, S. Craig, B. M. Dattilo, E. A. Denisova, I. D. Souza, M. Eickmann, V. G. Dugan, A. Ferrari, R. C. Gomila, L. Han, C. Judge, S. Mane, M. Matrosovich, C. Merryman, G. Palladino, G. A. Palmer, T. Spencer, T. Strecker, H. Trusheim, J. Uhlendorff, Y. Wen, A. C. Yee, J. Zaveri, B. Zhou, S. Becker, A. Donabedian, P. W. Mason, J. I. Glass, R. Rappuoli, J. C. Venter, Synthetic Generation of Influenza Vaccine Viruses for Rapid Response to Pandemics. Sci. Transl. Med. 5, 2013.
• Benders, G.A., V.N. Noskov, E.A. Denisova, C. Lartigue, D.G. Gibson, N. Assad-Garcia, R.Y. Chuang, W. Carrera, M. Moodie, M.A. Algire, Q. Phan, N. Alperovich, S. Vashee, C. Merryman, J.C. Venter, H.O. Smith, J.I. Glass, and C.A. Hutchison, 3rd, Cloning whole bacterial genomes in yeast. Nucleic Acids Res, 2010.
• Lartigue, C., S. Vashee, M.A. Algire, R.Y. Chuang, G.A. Benders, L. Ma, V.N. Noskov, E.A. Denisova, D.G. Gibson, N. Assad-Garcia, N. Alperovich, D.W. Thomas, C. Merryman, C.A. Hutchison, 3rd, H.O. Smith, J.C. Venter, and J.I. Glass, Creating bacterial strains from genomes that have been cloned and engineered in yeast. Science, 2009.
• Lartigue, C., J.I. Glass, N. Alperovich, R. Pieper, P.P. Parmar, C.A. Hutchison, 3rd, H.O. Smith, and J.C. Venter, Genome transplantation in bacteria: changing one species to another. Science, 2007.
• Glass, J.I., N. Assad-Garcia, N. Alperovich, S. Yooseph, M.R. Lewis, M. Maruf, C.A. Hutchison, 3rd, H.O. Smith, and J.C. Venter, Essential genes of a minimal bacterium. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 2006.