Nico J. Claassens

Nico J. Claassens is an Associate Professor at the Laboratory of Microbiology, Wageningen University. His research focuses on microbial synthetic metabolism, including engineering metabolism and synthetic cells using multiplex genetic engineering and quantitative proteomics. He leads the Microbial Synthetic Metabolism group, which develops sustainable bioproduction strategies using CO2 and one-carbon substrates (e.g., formate, methanol) to produce food proteins and other bio-based products. Claassens received his PhD from Wageningen University (2017) and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute (2017–2019), supported by a Rubicon Fellowship from NWO. He became an Assistant Professor at Wageningen in 2020 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2023.

Key research interests include synthetic biology, autotrophic growth pathways, and genome-scale engineering. He holds leadership roles: Associate Editor of Microbial Cell Factories, board member of the Dutch Biotechnology Association, and co-founder of SynBioNL. Awards include the NWO-Veni Grant (2019) and the NVBMB Prize (2022). Claassens teaches synthetic biology and advises the startup Farmless. His lab collaborates on national programs like Building A Synthetic Cell (BaSyC) and contributes to Wageningen Young Academy initiatives.

Major achievements include pioneering the reductive glycine pathway for CO2 utilization and developing methods like the SIBR-Cas genome-editing system. His work bridges fundamental research (e.g., synthetic cell design) and applied biotechnology (e.g., food protein production from sustainable feedstocks).