Jared Ellefson

Jared received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin for developing generalized techniques for the in vitro directed evolution of enzymes and pathways. He has over 15 peer reviewed publications in world class journals, including: Science, Nature, and Nature Biotechnology. He has led the development of improved enzymes for RNA transcription, amino-acyl tRNA synthetases, small molecule biosensors, and metabolic pathways. Of note, Jared developed a technique for the high-throughput evolution of thermostable reverse transcriptase enzymes (RT-CSR). Using this technique, a high-fidelity PCR enzyme was converted into a proofreading reverse transcriptase, yielding the world’s first high-fidelity reverse transcriptase, which has been patented and licensed for commercial production.