Our Research
Below, you will find detailed descriptions of our current projects, which span a range of cutting-edge topics. Our primary areas of focus include the sustainable utilisation of lignocellulose feedstocks, the production of added-value chemicals, enzyme engineering, and synthetic C1 metabolism. Each project aims to advance our understanding and application of these critical areas, driving innovation and sustainability in biotechnology.
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ForceYield
ForceYield is an innovative platform that utilises novel metabolic capabilities of a widely-used industrial microorganism to produce economically significant chemicals with higher yields and conversion rates. The organism will convert lignocellulosic sugars from agricultural waste into basic added-value chemicals through a novel synthetic metabolic pathway, which utilises a fundamentally altered central metabolism able to directly couple growth and bioproduction.
The development of bioprocesses and products is ensured by market, technology, and environmental impact analyses, combined with industrial and academic collaborations.
​BioLignoPlast
The LignoPlast project focuses on the use of wood waste lignin, a plentiful biopolymer, to produce plastic monomers that are essential for synthetic rubber, adhesives, and coatings. We want to achieve this by combining both chemical and biological approaches pursuing a sustainable and efficient production.
This project is in collaboration with three other research groups: Prof. Dr. Tobias Erb, Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology; Dr. Muxina Konarova, and Dr Birgitta Ebert, The University of Queensland.
biofactur-e
The paradigm shift towards utilizing harmful greenhouse gases like CO2 has sparked interest in biotechnology, particularly in using cellular factories for sustainable bioproduction in chemical and biomedical fields. We aim to establish a microbial chassis in E. coli for producing compounds from atmospheric CO2, utilizing an engineered strain that efficiently grows on CO2-derived methanol via the synthetic reductive glycine pathway. By engineering growth-coupled production, where growth depends on the production of desired compounds, we target a range of products from chemicals to pharmaceutical compounds and polymer precursors, demonstrating a proof-of-concept for sustainable microbial bioproduction.
MaxKat
Anaerobic microbial fermentations provide high product yields and are a cornerstone of industrial bio-based processes. However, the need for redox balancing limits the array of fermentable substrate-product combinations. To overcome this limitation, we work on “MaxKat”, a strain with aerobic fermentative metabolism that allows the introduction of selected respiratory modules. These modules can use oxygen to re-balance otherwise unbalanced fermentations, hence achieving controlled respiro-fermentative growth. This concept is a groundbreaking advance freeing highly efficient microbial fermentation from the limitations imposed by traditional redox balancing and allows for novel bioconversion routes in vivo.
MiMiCry
We are optimizing a bi-directional mutualistic co-culture of genetic engineered E. coli strains for the production of violacein, a high-value chemical. One of these strains is based on the construction of a pyruvate auxotrophic E. coli, which has a broad application potential for growth coupled enzyme selection and evolution as well as growth coupled bioproduction. Additionally, fluorescently labelled biosensor strains are constructed for metabolite sensing and product quantification.
EvoXylo
The objective of the present research project is to provide a scenario explaining the emergence of metabolism through early microbial cooperation and thus to contribute to our understanding of the evolution of the highly conserved primary metabolic pathways of extant organisms.
Carbon to Coatings
Instead of relying on plant as main carbon fixation method, we are developing a platform to assimilate CO2 and convert it into valuable compounds. One-carbon compounds, converted from CO2 with renewable energy, are promising feedstock for future. Engineering the synthetic one-carbon assimilation pathway paves the way of cycling carbon and sustainable production.