Objective
The completion, within a few years, of the sequencing of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome will provide a strong basis for the commercial exploitation of this yeast as a cell factory. Rational reprogramming of this cell factory for manufacturing high-added-value products requires a quantitative and integrated description of metabolism (i.e. from gene to product). In analogy to the chemical process industry, this description should be based on mass and energy flows and their control in each process step. This project will provide such a quantitative description of the metabolic network of Saccharomyces cerevisiae with respect to the production of heterologous proteins. The central metabolic routes in the network will be studied in relation to the full-scale industrial environment (effects of mixing dynamics on product and byproduct formation) and as a function of genome expression (relation between gene-controlled in-vivo fluxes and in-vitro enzyme activities, consequences of metabolic compartmentation).
The project is divided into 5 closely interlinked work packages, each of which focuses on a specific part of the central carbon and nitrogen metabolism of the yeast cell. Each work package is carried out by a balanced team of biologists and engineers. The overall consortium (50 % engineers and 50 % microbiologists & geneticists) consists of 10 research groups from 7 universities/research institutes and 2 industries (Nestle and Unilever) from 8 European countries. The deliverables of the project will include:
- Improved analytical tools for evaluating metabolism at time scales from seconds to minutes
- Yeast strains, genetically modified in important junctions of central carbon and nitrogen metabolism
- Quantitative information on metabolic compartmentation and in-vivo control of enzyme activities
- Validated stoichiometric and kinetic mathematical models of the metabolic network in relation to product and byproduct formation
- User-friendly mathematical tools for use in process optimization and education.
The results of the project will be disseminated via yearly reports and an international symposium under the auspices of the European Federation for Biotechnology. Industrial exploitation is safeguarded by an industrial Steering Committee and by the Yeast Industry Platform, which supports this project.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsgenomes
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteinsenzymes
- natural sciencesmathematicsapplied mathematicsmathematical model
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
2628 BC DELFT
Netherlands