Professor

Tel: 0510-85329265

Email: yni@jiangnan.edu.cn

Web: http://biocat.jiangnan.edu.cn/

2010 – present      Professor,   Jiangnan University, School of Biotechnology

2006 – 2010           Associate Professor, Jiangnan University, School   of Biotechnology

2002 – 2006           Ph.D., Virginia Commonwealth University

1999 – 2002           M.E., East China University of Science and Technology

1996 – 1999           Associate Lecture, Jiangnan College

1992 – 1996         B.E.,   East China University of Science and Technology

Our research areas:

1.        Mining   and engineering of key enzymes in chiral biocatalysis

Biocatalysis is a promising   method for the production of chiral compounds, due to advantages such as   environmental friendly, mild reaction conditions, and remarkable stereoselectivity.   We focus on mining and engineering of key enzymes, including alcohol   dehydrogenase/carbonyl reductase, lactamase, hydantoinase, decarboxylase etc, which are important for   the asymmetric synthesis of chiral building blocks useful for pharmaceuticals,   agrochemicals and natural products.

2.        Engineering   of microbial organic-solvent tolerance

Escherichia   coli has   been explored as a platform host strain for producing biofuels and fine   chemicals of industrial interests. Organic-solvent tolerance (OST) is considered   to be one crucial obstacle remained to be overcome. Strategies such as adaptation,   global transcription machinery engineering, chaperon engineering etc, were   adopted to enhance the solvent tolerance of E. coli. Our goal is to   construct OST E. coli strains and clarify their molecular mechanisms.

3.        Biofuels   production from lignocellulosic biomass

With the   limited supply of fossil fuels and the rise of oil price, there have been   renewed interest and increased effort toward the biofuels production from   renewable lignocellulosic resources. We are interested in biobutanol   production from lignocellulosic hydrolysates using clostridia strains, as   well as green and efficient pretreatment methods for various agricultural   residues.

1.      Wanru Xing,   Guochao Xu, Jinjun Dong, Ruizhi Han, Ye Ni*. Novel dihydrogen-bonding   deep eutectic solvents: pretreatment of rice straw for butanol fermentation   featuring enzyme recycling and high solvent yield. Chemical Engineering   Journal (2017) doi: 10.1016/j.cej.2017.09.176

2.      Jun Cheng,   Guochao Xu, Ruizhi Han, Jinjun Dong and Ye Ni*. Efficient access to   L-phenylglycine using a newly identified amino acid dehydrogenase from Bacillus   clausii. RSC Advances (2016) 6: 80557-80563

3.      Jieyu Zhou,   Guochao Xu, Ruizhi Han, Jinjun Dong, Weiguo Zhang, Rongzhen Zhang, Ye Ni*. Carbonyl   group-dependent high-throuhput screening and enzymatic characterization of   diaromatic ketone reductase. Catalysis Science & Technology   (2016) 6: 6320-6327

4.      Haiming Si,   Fa Zhang, Anning Wu, Ruizhi Han, Guochao Xu, Ye Ni*. DNA microarray of   global transcription factor mutant reveals membrane-related proteins involved   in n-butanol tolerance in Escherichia coli. Biotechnol Biofuels   (2016) 9: 114.

5.      Haixia Zhu,   Guochao Xu, Kai Zhang, Xudong Kong, Ruizhi Han, Jiahai Zhou*, Ye Ni*.   Crystal structure of tyrosine decarboxylase and identification of key   residues involved in conformational swing and substrate binding. Scientific   Reports (2016) 6:27779. DOI: 10.1038/srep27779

6.      Guochao Xu,   Lingling Zhang, Ye Ni*. Enzymatic preparation of D-phenyllactic acid at high   space-time yield with a novel phenylpyruvate reductase identified from Lactobacillus   sp. CGMCC 9967. Journal of Biotechnology (2016) 222:   29-37

7.      Long Zhang,   Menghan Liu, Serwanja Jamil, Ruizhi Han, Guochao Xu, Ye Ni^*.   PEGylation   and pharmacological characterization of a potential anti-tumor drug, an   engineered arginine deiminase originated from Pseudomonas plecoglossicida.   Cancer Letters (2015) 357:346–354

8.      Ye Ni*, Yongmei   Liu, Ulrich Schwaneberg, Leilei Zhu, Na Li, Lifeng Li, Zhihao Sun*. Rapid   evolution of arginine deiminase for improved anti-tumor activity. Applied   Microbiology & Biotechnology (2011) 90:193-201

9.      Ye Ni, Ulrich   Schwaneberg, Zhihao Sun*. Arginine deiminase, a potential anti-tumor drug. Cancer   Letters (2008) 261: 1-11

10.   Ye Ni, John Reye,   Rachel R. Chen* lpp deletion as a permeabilization method. Biotechnology   & Bioengineering (2007) 97: 1347-1356

11.   Ye Ni, Zichao Mao,   Rachel R. Chen*. Outer Membrane Mutation Effects on UDP–Glucose Permeability   and Whole-Cell Catalysis Rate. Applied Microbiology &   Biotechnology (2006) 73: 384-393

12.   Ye Ni and Rachel   R. Chen*. Accelerating Whole-cell Biocatalysis by Reducing Outer Membrane   Permeability Barrier. Biotechnology & Bioengineering (2004)   87:804-811