Gå til indhold

Resumé af bevillinger fra Det Strategiske Forskningsråd til projekter i ERA-nettet omhandlende Industriel Bioteknologi (ERA-IB2)

4 projekter har fået bevillinger fra Det Strategiske Forskningsråd i 2012 til projekter i ERA-nettet omhandlende Industriel Bioteknologi. Det totale bevilgede beløb til den danske del af disse projekter er på 7,8 mio. kroner (kun på engelsk).

Titel: Critical Enzymes for Sustainable Biofuels from Cellulose (CESBIC)
Projektkoordinatorer: Professor Paul Howard Walton and Professor Gideon John Davies, University of York
Danske partnere: Associate Professor Leila Lo Leggio, University of Copenhagen and Dr. Katja Johansen, Novozymes A/S
Samlet budget: 2.297.000 euro - hereof 1.665.000 euro in funding
Samlet finansiering til danske forskere: 502.944 euro
Periode: 2013-2016
Partnere: University of York, UK, Aix-Marseille Université CNRS, France, University of Copenhagen, Denmark University of Cambridge, UK, Novozymes A/S, Denmark.

Bioethanol produced from cellulose has the potential to transform the future of biofuels. It carries major and unique advantages in terms of carbon footprint, energy efficiency, use of low-value resources including waste, and economic viability. However, these advantages cannot be realized until an efficient means of overcoming the chemical recalcitrance of cellulose can be found.
In a recent (2011) major breakthrough it was shown that certain fungal enzymes are unprecedented copper-containing oxidases which have the capacity to breakdown cellulose into its constituent sugars. These enzymes have become the centre of worldwide attention as they likely hold the key to making cellulosic bioethanol a reality.

This proposal seeks to provide industry with an in-depth understanding of these enzymes, such that their commercial use can be maximised.

Our expected results are a complete understanding of the enzymes‘ mechanism of action and a deep appreciation of their structural and functional aspects, thus creating a world-leading knowledge base. We also expect to have curated and made available a much expanded genomic database of these enzymes, including links to their activities and structures—i.e. a single web-based resource for both academic and industrial researchers. And, finally, we expect to have supported strongly European enzyme-producing industry through up-to-date knowledge on enzyme function and insight into the most promising enzymatic candidates for commercialisation.
Exploitation will be both direct and indirect. In the direct sense, the project has an industrial partner who will immediately take results from the project into an industrial context and undertake assessment trials. Indirectly the project aims to benefit the wider European and global bioethanol community through the CAZy database by the cataloguing and publication of integrated genomic, structural and activity data for this class of enzymes.


Titel: Overcoming metabolic stochasticity and population dynamics in microbial cell factories (CONTIbugs)
Projektkoordinatorer: Dr. Katja Bühler and Professor Andreas Schmid, Technical University Dortmund
Danske partnere: Professor Søren Molin, Technical University of Denmark
Samlet budget: 1.083.000 euro - hereof 985.000 euro in funding
Samlet finansiering til danske forskere: 349.000 euro
Periode: 2013-2018
Partnere: Technical University Dortmund, Germany, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CNB-CSIC), Spain, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark, Tel-Aviv University, Israel

The efficiency of industrial whole-cell production processes is most often afflicted by the formation of subpopulations in a microbial culture during biotransformations and fermentations. A bioreactor running in batch, fed-batch or continuous mode can be regarded as an artificial environment that is permanently changing and thus creating a diversity of functional microhabitats which ultimately lead to the emergence of various pheno- and genotypes. Phenotypic heterogeneity and variability represents a key –and unwanted feature in the bacterial population that constitutes the biological catalyst. This project will investigate the phenomena of metabolic stochasticity and population dynamics in microbial cell factories using Pseudomonas sp. growing in suspended culture, as well as attached to surfaces as catalytic biofilms. Biofilms are resilient to a wide variety of environmental stresses. This inherited robustness make biofilms desirable as potent biocatalysts, especially regarding reactions involving biological difficult substrates and/or products.

This project addresses the phenomenon of catalytic heterogeneity of genetically identical bacterial cells using a controllable system composed of non-pathogenic Pseudomonas strains as host of reference. The biosynthesis of the short chain alcohol isobutanol will be employed as a model reaction system. On the technical side, cultivation systems and molecular tools will be developed for analyzing catalytic heterogeneity in bacterial cultures under process conditions.

The main outcome of this project is a collection of Pseudomonas strains (CONTIbugs) optimized as cell factories for hosting and stably expressing heterologous genes and maintaining productive catalytic activities in controlled populations for industrial biotechnology.


Titel: MICROscale downstream processing TOOLbox for Screening and process development (MICROTOOLS)
Projektkoordinatorer: Dr. Nicholas Szita, University College London
Danske partnere: Associate Professor Krist V. Gernaey, Technical University of Denmark and CEO Bent Svanholm, Svanholm.com
Samlet budget: 1.779.500 euro - hereof 1.521.700 euro in funding
Samlet finansiering til danske forskere: 43.200 euro
Periode: 2013-2016
Partnere: Technical University of Denmark, Denmark, Svanholm.com, Denmark, University College London, UK, “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of lasi (TUI), Romania, “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy lasi, Romaina.

Biocatalysis can potentially replace traditional chemical catalysis based procesess resulting in a greener production process. However, the reaction step of such a biocatalysis process needs to be integrated with one or several purification steps to recover products and/or remove inhibitory substances. The economic feasibility of a bio-based process is typically dependent to a large extent on the efficiency and the cost of the subsequent separation steps. Consequently, a series of separation process candidates have to be investigated with the purpose of achieving the most efficient downstream processing configuration. The more rapidly such an investigation can be conducted, the faster critical decisions about economical feasibility of a bio-based process can be taken, and the faster one can bring a product on the market.
The main objective of this project is to establish a microscale downstream processing toolbox which can be used for rapid and high content screening or for process development. The following main results are expected to be obtained:

  1. New and existing building blocks of a miniaturised downstream processing toolbox will be developed, standardized and evaluated.
  2. The toolbox will be supplemented by advanced on-line measurements and rational experimentation protocols for rapid and accurate generation of data for downstream process characterization and development.
  3. Scaling-up of the results obtained with the miniaturized downstream processing toolbox will be evaluated on the basis of lab-scale and pilot-scale experiments.
  4. Separation process sequences will be developed for two challenging and industrially relevant case studies (transketolase, transaminase) in order to demonstrate the practical applicability of the miniaturised downstream processing toolbox.

At the end of the project, the toolbox will be useful for biocatalysis process development in general. Thus, the application potential is enormous, for example in view of the current focus on integrating biocatalysis within traditional chemical reaction sequences. Indeed, due to the relatively small scale of the equipment, the toolbox will be useful and affordable both for industry and academia.


Titel: Systematic consideration of inhomogeneity at the large scale: towards a stringent development of industrial bioprocesses (SCILS)
Projektkoordinatorer: Professor Marco Oldiges, IBG-1: Biotechnology/Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH
Danske partnere: Dr. Kjeld Raunkjær Kjeldsen, Vitalys I/S
Samlet budget: 2.213.400 euro - hereof 1.843.200 euro in funding
Samlet finansiering til danske forskere: 140.000 euro
Periode: 2013-2016
Partnere: IBG-1: Biotechnology/Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Germany, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, Sequip S & E GmbH, Germany, Asociacion de Investigacion (INBIOTEC), Spain, Vitalys I/S, Denmark, Loughborough University, UK.

The project aims to systematically elucidate the influence of increasing bioreactor inhomogeneity which occurs in industrial-scale bioreactor, with respect to microbial physiology and production performance of Corynebacterium glutamicum, a microorganism with broad industrial applications.
Early consideration of inhomogeneity issues during lab scale process development will facilitate the selection of the most potent production strain, accelerate the upscaling process and improve the performance at production scale. Such inhomogeneous conditions can be mimicked at lab scale by a so called scale-down simulator bioreactor, consisting of a well-mixed stirred tank reactor (STR) and a plug-flow reactor (PFR) connected in series to it. During operation the cultivation volume is continuously pumped from the STR through the PFR simulating zones of inhomogeneity known to be present at the large scale.

This central challenge of inhomogeneity is addressed, for the first time, by an effort bridging both, the cellular and the process level, enabled by scale-down simulator bioreactor technology, innovative process analytical technology, multi-omics analysis and genetic engineering.

Results and inventions will be translated into innovation and will attract attention from industry and the scientific community. Knowledge will be patented/licensed and proper dissemination of results will be achieved by high-quality peer-reviewed publications, presentation at conferences and industrial meetings. The project has the potential to lead to highly innovative industrial applications and to improve the competitiveness of European companies in the bioprocessing sector.

Handlinger tilknyttet webside

Senest opdateret 21. januar 2013