{"id":3319,"date":"2024-07-11T19:12:51","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T19:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/?post_type=profiles&#038;p=3319"},"modified":"2025-12-11T12:46:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T17:46:20","slug":"mekhi-williams","status":"publish","type":"profiles","link":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/profiles\/mekhi-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"Mekhi Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1443\" height=\"1443\" src=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/WilliamsMekhi-edited.jpg\" alt=\"Mekhi headshot\" class=\"wp-image-3836\" style=\"width:200px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/WilliamsMekhi-edited.jpg 1443w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/WilliamsMekhi-edited-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/WilliamsMekhi-edited-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/WilliamsMekhi-edited-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/WilliamsMekhi-edited-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1443px) 100vw, 1443px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><strong>MIT Department: <\/strong>Chemical Engineering<br><strong>Faculty Mentor<\/strong>: Prof. Kristala Prather<br><strong>Research Supervisor: <\/strong>Sean Wirt<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Undergraduate Institution: <\/strong>University of Delaware<br><strong>Hometown:<\/strong> Bear, Delaware<br><strong>Website: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/mekhi-a-williams\/\" data-type=\"URL\">LinkedIn<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Biography<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Mekhi Williams is a junior Chemical Engineering major with a minor in Biochemical Engineering at the University of Delaware. He is conducting research focused on the yellow mealworm&#8217;s ability to digest plastic and its potential uses for bioprocessing. He aspires to go to graduate school for a PhD in synthetic biology research focusing on metabolic engineering. He wants to engineer the enzymatic pathways of cells to design green methods of creating products. He is currently working on such a project in the Prather lab at MIT, which seeks to use E. coli to create the bulk chemical aniline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Abstract<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>Designing an Aniline Production Pathway in E. coli<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>Mekhi Williams<sup>1<\/sup>, Sean Wirt<sup>2<\/sup>, and Dr. Kristala L Jones Prather<sup>2<\/sup><\/strong><br><sup>1<\/sup>Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware<br><sup>2<\/sup>Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Aniline is a bulk chemical used as an intermediate in the production of dyes, pharmaceuticals,<br>pesticides, and other useful products. Current aniline production requires using the carcinogenic,petroleum-derived chemical benzene, which presents safety concerns above that of aniline and sustainability issues. Metabolic engineering presents a possible solution to this issue. Organisms can facilitate complex chemical reactions on organic matter using enzymatic pathways encoded by their genes. Such a pathway was proposed to produce aniline in bacteria, but it was not proven to work and lacked optimization for large-scale production. Thus, we sought to introduce the full aniline pathway into E. coli. Four recombinant genes were chemically transformed into E. coli and overexpressed for it to produce aniline from glucose as a feedstock. Expression of non-native enzymes was confirmed via SDS-PAGE analysis of cell lysates, and aniline production was analyzed using HPLC analysis of engineered cells grown with glucose. Aniline production was optimized by altering cell growth conditions such as induction timing and plasmid design by substituting homologous genes and confirming the function of the decarboxylase gene. By successfully designing a biosynthetic method for producing aniline, this high-use chemical can now be produced with mitigated safety and sustainability concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3836,"template":"","profile_category":[22],"class_list":["post-3319","profiles","type-profiles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","profile_category-2024-interns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/3319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profiles"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/3319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4966,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/3319\/revisions\/4966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"profile_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_category?post=3319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}