Papers
4
Total Citations
95
H-Index
4
About
Jeffrey A. Mertens is a pioneer in the automation of functional proteomics and synthetic biology, with a career dedicated to engineering high-throughput robotic systems for microbial strain development. His research centers on the intersection of plasmid-based functional proteomics, automated liquid handling, and metabolic engineering—particularly for bioenergy applications. Mertens made foundational contributions by designing and assembling integrated robotic workcells that enable the rapid construction and screening of mutagenized open reading frame libraries. His 2006 paper on high-throughput screening of cellulase F mutants (35 citations) demonstrated a fully automated plate assay using a functional proteomic robotic workcell, a landmark in the field. He further advanced xylose utilization in yeast by engineering *Saccharomyces cerevisiae* strains with a three-plasmid SUMO expression system (29 citations), directly addressing a key bottleneck in lignocellulosic biofuel production. His work on cost-effective, fully automated multiplex library construction (16 citations) and liquid handler component development (15 citations) established practical, scalable protocols for industrial biotechnology. Mertens’s innovations have significantly reduced the manual labor and cost of protein engineering, enabling the rapid optimization of enzymes and peptides for bioenergy and therapeutic applications.
Research Focus
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