Descripción del proyecto
Las bacterias extremófilas podrían impulsar la producción de disolventes
Los microbios se están posicionando como aliados prometedores en la transición hacia la generación más ecológica de energía mediante la obtención de numerosas sustancias químicas valiosas con la ayuda de biología sintética e ingeniería metabólica. Sin embargo, la ampliación de la producción resulta difícil debido a la toxicidad de los productos químicos obtenidos para los microbios de producción ordinarios. Es posible que las «Pseudomonas» no tengan este problema, ya que son organismos extremófilos, es decir, que pueden sobrevivir en entornos extremos. El proyecto PROSPER, financiado con fondos europeos, genomodificará este organismo tan robusto de forma que sirva como sumidero virtualmente inagotable de disolventes hidrófobos, como el estireno y el benceno, utilizando un nuevo enfoque que no se ha demostrado nunca.
Objetivo
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
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
HORIZON-AG - HORIZON Action Grant Budget-BasedInstitución de acogida
52428 Julich
Alemania