Engineering Seminar

The need to develop sustainable, biology-based processes to produce chemicals and bio-based energy and fuels is now firmly accepted as the way forward. While this bio-based economy has been touted as the solution to humanity's problems, we are very far from being able to implement even a small fraction of that potential. It would be fair to state that our technological advances in the non-bio based aspects of this technology are well developed, and that biological aspects appear for now limiting the economical applications. Why is that so? Most strain development for bio-based chemicals using metabolic engineering and synthetic biology is currently based on the E. coli and yeast platforms, most likely if not solely based on the superior genetic tools available for these organisms. If one, however, considers bioprocessing characteristics of major economical impact, like substrate utilization and biocatalytic/biophysical traits, a different, more diverse picture emerges. What steps would be necessary to set the foundation for this more rational approach?

Roberts Hall

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