Topic "Microbial metabolic refactoring"

The great challenge of the 21st century is to provide sustainable solutions to mitigate the climate change. This challenge could be met in part by the transition from a fossil-based economy to a renewable carbon based economy. This bio-based economy is however difficult to implement because it is based on the exploitation of biological systems used as factories for bioproduction. Unlike chemical processes, biological systems are very complex, inefficient and difficult to manage. Therefore, a new generation of Industrial cell factories that are able to utilise all available renewable carbon sources (from CO2 to sugars) and convert them into bio-based products at optimal carbon conservation (eg yield) -is required. This carbon conservative –controllable- metabolic network shall be restructured to provide the necessary requirements for cellular resource, while optimally feeding the bioproduction pathways to achieve maximum titre, productivity and yield, making the whole bioprocess economically viable. This unprecedented goal will be achieved by a significant rewriting of the carbon metabolic networks and by a dynamic control of the bioproduction pathways each of which can be achieved independently to facilitate the building of efficient cell factories combining the latest state-of-the-art technologies, including genome engineering, evolutionary engineering and computational tools for pathways design. This high-risk but highly beneficial project aims to lay the foundations for the Bio-industry of the future, and shall meet the society's expectations in terms of environmental performance, sustainability and employability. Today, our research is focused on the engineered of synthetic pathway leading to the production of the non-natural molecules, aiming at maximal carbon yield of from sugars, and in the meantime, we are looking at the physiological/ metabolic consequences of expressing new non-natural pathway in a cell. As a side story, we are also forging on the metabolic potentiality of new non-common yeast found in indigenous area.