Tae Seok Moon, Ph.D. is a professor at J. Craig Venter Institute in the synthetic biology group. Prior or joining JCVI, he was a professor at Washington University in St. Louis in the McKelvey School of Engineering. His research goals are to understand and engineer biological networks that genes and cellular processes use to solve energy, environmental, agricultural, and health problems. He has a broad background in systems and synthetic biology, with expertise in the development of engineered cells for practical applications.

His body of work includes engineering probiotic bacteria for medical applications, engineering bacteria to enable efficient production of biofuels, biomaterials, and chemicals from biomass and waste plastics, developing biocontainment strategies to prevent the spread of GMOs in the environment, building application-relevant biosensors and dynamic sensor-regulators, understanding and engineering microbiota and microbiota-host interactions using computational and experimental approaches, engineering biology for space exploration and engineered living materials, preventing antibiotic resistance spread by implementing engineering approaches, and engineering predictable RNA regulators.

Dr. Moon is committed to mentoring young researchers. In addition to students and postdoctoral researchers in his lab, he has mentored iGEM student teams and provided teaching kits to high school teachers and K-12 students. He founded and administers the weekly SynBYSS seminar series, which features a rising young scientist paired with a seasoned investigator. He is also the chair of the inaugural in-person SynBYSS conference.

Dr. Moon earned his BS and MS in chemical technology from Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea, and a Ph.D. under the guidance of Kristala Prather in chemical engineering with a minor in biological chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Christopher Voigt Group in the Department of Biological Engineering & Synthetic Biology Center at MIT and in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California-San Francisco.

Research Priorities

Biocontainment, biosafety, and biosecurity (funded by NIH, USDA, and EPA)
  • Develop kill switches for biocontainment.
  • Investigate the impact of GMOs on simulated environments.
  • Prevent antibiotic resistance spread using engineering approaches.
Enabling waste valorization and solving the climate crisis (funded by AIChE, DARPA, DOE, JGI, and NSF)
  • Plastic upcycling
  • Food and agricultural waste valorization
  • C1 gas conversion into value-added biomaterials and chemicals
  • Additive manufacturing and engineered living materials using wastes as feedstocks
Engineering probiotics and organoids for biomedical application (funded by NIH)
  • Developing probiotics for diagnostics and therapeutics
  • Engineering organoids for diagnostics and as testbeds for therapeutics
  • Developing biosensors and genetic circuits for biomedical applications
Microbiota engineering (funded by NIH, NSF, ONR, and USDA)
  • Tool development for microbiota engineering in situ
  • Gut and skin microbiota engineering
  • Understanding and engineering plant-soil microbiota interactions
  • Engineering the planet as a huge bioreactor
  • Engineering synthetic consortia for space exploration
Understanding the rules of life, biological robustness, and evolution (funded by NSF URoL and NSF MCB)
  • Understanding microbiota dynamics and its emergent behavior using computational and experimental approaches
  • Understanding living systems by building genetic circuits from the bottom up
  • Elucidating the principles of evolution

Publications

New biotechnology. 2024-05-25; 80.69-71.
Earth: Extinguishing anthropogenic risks through harmonization
Moon TS
PMID: 38367910
New biotechnology. 2023-12-25; 78.150-152.
EBRC: Enhancing bioeconomy through research and communication
Moon TS
PMID: 37918664
Cell reports methods. 2023-12-18; 3.12: 100669.
Engineering E. coli strains using antibiotic-resistance-gene-free plasmids
Amrofell MB, Rengarajan S, Vo ST, Ramirez Tovar ES, LoBello L, Dantas G, Moon TS
PMID: 38086386
Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology. 2023-12-13; 11.1340377.
Editorial: CRISPR-aided bioengineering for value-added product development
Bandyopadhyay A, Köpke M, Moon TS
PMID: 38152286
PLoS computational biology. 2023-12-07; 19.12: e1011652.
Ten simple rules for managing laboratory information
Berezin CT, Aguilera LU, Billerbeck S, Bourne PE, Densmore D, Freemont P, Gorochowski TE, Hernandez SI, Hillson NJ, King CR, Köpke M, Ma S, Miller KM, Moon TS, Moore JH, Munsky B, Myers CJ, Nicholas DA, Peccoud SJ, Zhou W, Peccoud J
PMID: 38060459
PLoS biology. 2023-10-20; 21.10: e3002180.
Microbial thermogenesis is dependent on ATP concentrations and the protein kinases ArcB, GlnL, and YccC
Dhatt PS, Chiu S, Moon TS
PMID: 37862351
Trends in biotechnology. 2023-09-01; 41.9: 1099-1105.
Impacting future generations of synthetic biologists by ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion
Moon TS, Solomon K, Borodina I, Vickers C
PMID: 37105777
ACS synthetic biology. 2023-06-16; 12.6: 1868-1873.
Characterizing a Propionate Sensor in E. coli Nissle 1917
Amrofell MB, Moon TS
PMID: 37220256
ACS synthetic biology. 2023-06-16; 12.6: 1632-1644.
A High-Quality Genome-Scale Model for Rhodococcus opacus Metabolism
Roell GW, Schenk C, Anthony WE, Carr RR, Ponukumati A, Kim J, Akhmatskaya E, Foston M, Dantas G, Moon TS, Tang YJ, García Martín H
PMID: 37186551
ACS synthetic biology. 2023-06-16; 12.6: 1583-1585.
SynHEAL: Synthesis of Health Equity, Advancement, and Leadership
Moon TS
PMID: 37322888
Nature chemical biology. 2023-05-01; 19.5: 544-545.
Mining microbial metabolism
Tang YJ, Moon TS
PMID: 36747057
Cell reports. 2023-01-31; 42.1: 111908.
Upcycling of poly(ethylene terephthalate) to produce high-value bio-products
Diao J, Hu Y, Tian Y, Carr R, Moon TS
PMID: 36640302
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2023-01-03; 120.1: e2213154120.
Computational design of CRISPR guide RNAs to enable strain-specific control of microbial consortia
Rottinghaus AG, Vo S, Moon TS
PMID: 36574681
Trends in biotechnology. 2022-12-01; 40.12: 1405-1414.
SynMADE: synthetic microbiota across diverse ecosystems
Moon TS
PMID: 36117027
Communications biology. 2022-10-19; 5.1: 1109.
Deciphering the transcriptional regulation of the catabolism of lignin-derived aromatics in Rhodococcus opacus PD630
Diao J, Carr R, Moon TS
PMID: 36261484
Biodesign research. 2022-09-08; 2022.9806979.
Meta-Analysis of the Expansion in the Field of Structural Biology of ABC Transporters
Kim S, Bajaj T, Chabon C, Tablante E, Kulchinskaya T, Moon TS, Bajaj R
PMID: 37850125
Nature chemical biology. 2022-04-01; 18.4: 353.
Making space for young speakers
Moon TS
PMID: 35352064
Cell systems. 2022-03-16; 13.3: 204-214.e4.
Engineering ligand-specific biosensors for aromatic amino acids and neurochemicals
Rottinghaus AG, Xi C, Amrofell MB, Yi H, Moon TS
PMID: 34767760
ACS synthetic biology. 2022-02-18; 11.2: 522-527.
Making Security Viral: Shifting Engineering Biology Culture and Publishing
Mackelprang R, Adamala KP, Aurand ER, Diggans JC, Ellington AD, Evans SW, Fortman JLC, Hillson NJ, Hinman AW, Isaacs FJ, Medford JI, Mamaghani S, Moon TS, Palmer MJ, Peccoud J, Vitalis EA, Hook-Barnard I, Friedman DC
PMID: 35176864
Nature communications. 2022-02-03; 13.1: 672.
Genetically stable CRISPR-based kill switches for engineered microbes
Rottinghaus AG, Ferreiro A, Fishbein SRS, Dantas G, Moon TS
PMID: 35115506
Environmental science & technology. 2021-06-15; 55.12: 8045-8053.
Duplex Structure of Double-Stranded RNA Provides Stability against Hydrolysis Relative to Single-Stranded RNA
Zhang K, Hodge J, Chatterjee A, Moon TS, Parker KM
PMID: 34033461
ACS synthetic biology. 2021-04-16; 10.4: 786-798.
An Improved CRISPR Interference Tool to Engineer Rhodococcus opacus
DeLorenzo DM, Diao J, Carr R, Hu Y, Moon TS
PMID: 33787248

Research Priorities

Biocontainment, biosafety, and biosecurity (funded by NIH, USDA, and EPA)
  • Develop kill switches for biocontainment.
  • Investigate the impact of GMOs on simulated environments.
  • Prevent antibiotic resistance spread using engineering approaches.
Enabling waste valorization and solving the climate crisis (funded by AIChE, DARPA, DOE, JGI, and NSF)
  • Plastic upcycling
  • Food and agricultural waste valorization
  • C1 gas conversion into value-added biomaterials and chemicals
  • Additive manufacturing and engineered living materials using wastes as feedstocks
Engineering probiotics and organoids for biomedical application (funded by NIH)
  • Developing probiotics for diagnostics and therapeutics
  • Engineering organoids for diagnostics and as testbeds for therapeutics
  • Developing biosensors and genetic circuits for biomedical applications
Microbiota engineering (funded by NIH, NSF, ONR, and USDA)
  • Tool development for microbiota engineering in situ
  • Gut and skin microbiota engineering
  • Understanding and engineering plant-soil microbiota interactions
  • Engineering the planet as a huge bioreactor
  • Engineering synthetic consortia for space exploration
Understanding the rules of life, biological robustness, and evolution (funded by NSF URoL and NSF MCB)
  • Understanding microbiota dynamics and its emergent behavior using computational and experimental approaches
  • Understanding living systems by building genetic circuits from the bottom up
  • Elucidating the principles of evolution
02-Oct-2024
Press Release

J. Craig Venter Institute awarded 5-year, $5M grant to lead Center for Innovative Recycling and Circular Economy (CIRCLE)

CIRCLE is one of the six new NSF Global Centers focused on advancing bioeconomy research to solve global challenges

01-May-2024

Tae Seok Moon, Ph.D. and Nan Zhu, Ph.D. join J. Craig Venter Institute faculty

JCVI continues to actively recruit faculty to expand core research areas, including human health and synthetic biology