Biointelligent Manufacturing in Memorium of Arny (Arnold) L. Demain

The journal Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology will publish a special issue dedicated to our beloved Prof. Arny (Arnold) L. Demain, who left us on April 3, 2020. The special issue is a tribute to his tremendous contributions to exploratory basic and applied research in the field of industrial microbiology and biotechnology.

Arnold L. Demain (April 26, 1927 – April 3, 2020) obtained his PhD degree from University of California in 1954. In a career that spanned 60 years, he was Professor of Industrial Microbiology in the Biology Department at MIT and Founder and Head of Department of Fermentation Microbiology at Merck & Co. As a deceased US National Academy of Sciences fellow, he gained a great reputation in the field of industrial microbiology as one of the world’s leading industrial microbiologists and was instrumental in the development of the beta-lactam industry. He also published over 500 papers, co-edited or co-authored 14 books and had 21 U.S. patents.

Moreover, with a great sense of humor, Demain was a wonderful mentor, a kind person, a hard worker for his students and scholars and a loving father. "Arny's Army & Friends" was formed in honour of Demain when he retired in 2001, the group is made up of his students and friends who have gone on to play a decisive and global role in the broad ranges of microbiology, from industrial microbiology and biotechnology, to the frontiers of synthetic biology.  

The main topics of this special issue include, but are not limited to:

• Industrial microbiology and biotechnology
• Development and optimization of fermentation process
• Biosynthesis of secondary metabolites and natural products
• Metabolic engineering of bioactive compounds
• Discovery of bioactive secondary metabolites
• New metabolic pathways for valuable products
• Metabolic pathway optimization
• Enzyme engineering
• Biointelligent manufacturing 
• Microbial omicses
• Bioinformatics
• Systems biology
• Synthetic biology

This special issue will accept reviews and original research articles. 

Important Dates

Paper submission due: 31 October, 2020

Submission Information

Submission website: https://www.editorialmanager.com/synbio/default.aspx

Guest Editors

• Jens Nielsen, Professor of Systems and Synthetic Biology, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. nielsenj@chalmers.se
• Qiang Gao, Professor of the Key Laboratory of Industrial Fermentation Microbiology of Ministry of Education, College of Biotechnology, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin, China. gaoqiang@tust.edu.cn