About

I’m a protein designer at Science working to engineer better proteins for our biohybrid neural interface. I am passionate about using proteins for improving human health and environmental sustainability, and I love working at the interface between synthetic biology and machine learning! I received a B.S. in chemical engineering and applied math at the University of Nevada, Reno before earning a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley advised by Jay Keasling. I was previously at the Joint Bioenergy Institute engineering polyketide synthases to produce biofuels and bioproducts. My work has been generously supported by a McNair Fellowship, NSF GRFP, and GEM Fellowship.

Outside of the lab, I like lifting weights, exploring nature, and hanging with my dog.

Publications

  1. Roberts, J. B.*; Nava, A. A.*; Pearson, A. N.; Incha, M. R.; Valencia, L. E.; Ma, M.; Rao, A.; Keasling, J. D. Foldy: An open-source web application for interactive protein structure analysis. PLOS Computational Biology 2024. 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011171
  2. Pearson A. N.; Incha, M. R.; Ho, C. N.; Schmidt, M.; Roberts, J. B.; Nava, A. A.; Keasling, J. D. Characterization and Diversification of AraC/XylS Family Regulators Guided by Transposon Sequencing. ACS Synthetic Biology 2023. 10.1021/acssynbio.3c00441
  3. Garber, M. E.; Frank, V.; Kazakov, A. E.; Incha, M. R.; Nava, A. A.; Zhang, H.; Valencia, L. E.; Keasling, J. D.; Rajeev, L.; Mukhopadhyay, A. REC protein family expansion by the emergence of a new signaling pathway. mBio 2023. 10.1128/mbio.02622-23
  4. Nava, A. A.; Fear, A. L.; Lee. N; Mellinger, P.; Lan, G.; McCauley, J.; Tan, S.; Kaplan, N.; Goyal, G.; Coates, R. C.; Roberts, J. B.; Johnson, Z.; Hu, R.; Wu, B.; Ahn, J.; Kim, W. E.; Wan, Y.; Yin, K.; Hillson, N.; Haushalter, R. W.; Keasling, J. D. Automated Platform for the Plasmid Construction Process. ACS Synthetic Biology 2023. 10.1021/acssynbio.3c00292
  5. Nava, A. A.; Roberts, J. B.; Haushalter, R. W.; Wang, Z.; Keasling, J. D. Module-Based Polyketide Synthase Engineering for de Novo Polyketide Biosynthesis. ACS Synthetic Biology 2023. 10.1021/acssynbio.3c00282
  6. Schmidt, M.; Lee, N.; Zhan, C.; Roberts, J. B.; Nava, A. A.; Keiser, L. S.; Vilchez, A. A.; Chen, Y.; Petzold, C. J.; Haushalter, R. W.; Blank, L. M.; Keasling, J. D. Maximizing Heterologous Expression of Engineered Type I Polyketide Synthases: Investigating Codon Optimization Strategies. ACS Synthetic Biology 2023. 10.1021/acssynbio.3c00367
  7. Englund, E.; Schmidt, M.; Nava, A. A.; Klass, S.; Keiser, L.; Dan, Q.; Katz, L.; Yuzawa, S.; Keasling, J. D. Biosensor Guided Polyketide Synthases Engineering for Optimization of Domain Exchange Boundaries. Nature Communications 2023. 10.1038/s41467-023-40464-x
  8. Englund, E.; Schmidt, M.; Nava, A. A.; Lechner, A.; Deng, K.; Jocic, R.; Lin, Y.; Roberts, J.; Benites, V.; Kakumanu, R.; Gin, J.; Chen, Y.; Liu, Y.; Petzold, C.; Baidoo, E.; Northen, T.; Adams, P.; Katz, L.; Yuzawa, S.; Keasling, J. D. Expanding Extender Substrate Selection for Unnatural Polyketide Biosynthesis by Acyltransferase Domain Exchange within a Modular Polyketide Synthase. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2023. 10.1021/jacs.2c11027
  9. Tao, X. B.; LaFrance, S.; Xing, Y.; Nava, A. A.; Martin, H. G.; Keasling, J. D.; Backman T. W. H. ClusterCAD 2.0: an updated computational platform for chimeric type I polyketide synthase and nonribosomal peptide synthetase design. Nucleic Acids Research 2022. 10.1093/nar/gkac1075
  10. Cruz-Morales, P.; Yin, K.; Landera, A.; Cort, J. R.; Young, R. P.; Kyle, J. E.; Bertrand, R.; Iavarone, A. T.; Acharya, S.; Cowan, A.; Chen, Y.; Gin, J. W.; Scown, C. D.; Petzold, C. J.; Araujo-Barcelos, C.; Sundstrom, E.; George, A.; Liu, Y.; Klass, S.; Nava, A. A.; Keasling, J. D. Biosynthesis of Polycyclopropanated High Energy Biofuels. Joule 2022. 10.1016/j.joule.2022.05.011
*Co-First Author