Improvement of bacterial lipid rafts to produce biofuels

Obiettivo

We aim to convert an industrial waste product (glycerol) to an environment-friendly biofuel (biobutanol), by using a competitive and efficient system, based on bacterial lipid rafts with gain of function mutants of flotillin, their main scaffold component.
Bacterial cells can be used as hosts for biosynthesis of a variety of value-added products as antibiotics or vitamins. The use of recently discovered bacterial lipid rafts to confine the reactions is expected to greatly improve the production levels, when comparing with traditional systems. We will now further improve the yields of synthesis by generating gain of function mutants of B. subtilis flotillin (FloA), a key-role player in lipid rafts scaffolding. These Superflotillins or Flo* will organize more stable, robust and functional rafts. Therefore, they will confine more complex biosynthesis pathways with more enzymes and improve the production yields. We will then test the efficiency of these improved mutants in biosynthesis of biofuels. Five Clostridium spp. enzymes confined in B. subtilis Flo*-rafts will produce biobutanol, an alternative for traditional petroleum, using glycerol waste as a unique carbon source. After the metabolic optimisation of the process, together with our industrial partner (Enantis, CZ) we will scale up the production and assess the project viability for biobutanol production at industrially relevant conditions.