Stéphanie HEUX

I am leading the Metasys team at Toulouse Biotechnology Institute (TBI, former LISBP). My research aimed at developing innovative and original biotechnological processes using microorganisms as cell factory for upgrading renewable carbon resource into bioproducts. I go beyond the natural by designing new synthetic metabolic & regulatory networks which can perform particular functions that does not exist in nature. I then analyze their functioning at the cellular level using genome scale models, transcriptomics metabolomics and fluxomics. This knowledge helps me to optimize the synthetic cell factories but also to reach a deeper understanding of how life works. The renewable carbon resource, I am interested in, is methanol which can produced from the greenhouse gas CO₂ through renewable photo and electrochemical processes, thus helping to mitigate global warming. My work focuses on both natural (in Bacillus methanolicus & Komagataella phaffii) and synthetic (in Escherichia coli) methylotrophy, a process which represents a real metabolic challenge. My goal is to get the full picture of what is necessary for methylotrophic growth in natural and synthetic methylotrophs (i.e. spatial organization, regulation and metabolism) and apply this fundamental understanding to develop microbial cell factories for the sustainable production of value-added products from methanol.