Projektbeschreibung
Extreme liebende Bakterien könnten Produktion von Lösungsmitteln ankurbeln
Mikroben erweisen sich als vielversprechende Verbündete bei unserem Übergang zu umweltfreundlicherer Energie, da sie mithilfe der synthetischen Biologie und des Pathwaydesigns viele wertvolle Chemikalien produzieren. Die Hochskalierung der Produktion wird jedoch durch die Toxizität der produzierten Chemikalien für gewöhnliche Produktionsmikroben erschwert. Pseudomonas birgt dieses Problem möglicherweise nicht. Dieser Organismus ist extremophil und kann in extremen Umgebungen überleben. Im Rahmen des EU-finanzierten Projekts PROSPER wird dieser robuste Organismus so konstruiert, dass er eine praktisch unendliche Produktsenke für hydrophobe Lösungsmittel wie Styrol und Benzol bietet, wobei ein neuartiger Ansatz verwendet wird, der noch nie demonstriert wurde.
Ziel
Replacement of fossil chemicals with biological counterparts has been widely accepted as a vital pursuit to increase the sustainability of our chemical and material industries. Synthetic biology and metabolic engineering enable us to produce a plethora of chemicals with microbes, but the majority of these never make it past the proof-of-principle stage. This is especially the case for drop-in bulk aromatics like styrene or benzene. The main reason for this is that such products are too toxic to ordinary production microbes.
In PROSPER I aim to overcome this hurdle and demonstrate the efficient microbial production of hydrophobic aromatic chemicals using solvent-tolerant Pseudomonas. I will engineer this unique extremophile to break the solubility barrier of these chemicals, forming a second phase of product. This second phase provides a virtually endless product sink and it enables extremely simple downstream recovery.
The bio-based production of a second phase of such chemicals has thus far never been shown. I believe that this relates to a fundamental problem in biotechnology: production tolerance, i.e. tolerance of the producing organism to the produced product, rather than to an externally added chemical (as it is usually studied). In PROSPER I intend to generate deep mechanistic insights into the processes governing both types of tolerance and to leverage these insights to open up a new field of biotechnological production of hydrophobic compounds. To achieve this, I will develop new methods to analyze intracellular solvent concentrations, build a Pseudomonas chassis with enhanced production tolerance to hydrophobic solvents, and enable production of solvents like styrene, ethylbenzene, and even benzene.
I am in a unique position to achieve this goal, with over 15 years of experience in the engineering of Pseudomonas as a workhorse in biotechnology, the study of solvent-tolerance, and the development and application of synthetic biology tools and metho
Wissenschaftliches Gebiet
Programm/Programme
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thema/Themen
Finanzierungsplan
HORIZON-AG - HORIZON Action Grant Budget-BasedGastgebende Einrichtung
52428 Julich
Deutschland