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Overview of processes for using renewable resources in industrial biotechnology.
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Future manufacturing will focus on new, improved products, and new, improved production methods. Recent biotechnological and scientific advances, such as CRISPR-Cas and various omics technologies, pave the way to exciting novel biotechnological research, development, and commercialization of new sustainable products. Rigorous mathematical descripti...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... production of organic compounds requires a renewable carbon source, and in addition a renewable energy source if the carbon source does not contain sufficient energy. Several generations of biotechnical processes can be distinguished, as summarized in Table 1. The advantages and disadvantages of the early generations are generally known. ...Context 2
... alternatives may be more practical strategies for achieving high electron transfer rates and density. Hybrids of the generations mentioned in Table 1 are also feasible, and challenging, for example using electrophilic microorganisms taking electrons directly from photovoltaic cells [1]. In the end, flexible manufacturing concepts, using a portfolio of different renewable feedstocks and renewable energies, could well be the winning solution to bring a large suite of additional bio-products to commercialization. ...Context 3
... production of organic compounds requires a renewable carbon source, and in addition a renewable energy source if the carbon source does not contain sufficient energy. Several generations of biotechnical processes can be distinguished, as summarized in Table 1. The advantages and disadvantages of the early generations are generally known. ...Context 4
... alternatives may be more practical strategies for achieving high electron transfer rates and density. Hybrids of the generations mentioned in Table 1 are also feasible, and challenging, for example using electrophilic microorganisms taking electrons directly from photovoltaic cells [1]. In the end, flexible manufacturing concepts, using a portfolio of different renewable feedstocks and renewable energies, could well be the winning solution to bring a large suite of additional bio-products to commercialization. ...Similar publications
In industrial biotechnology, microbial cell factories utilize renewable resources to produce energy, materials and chemicals. Industrial biotechnology plays an increasingly important role in solving the resource, energy and environmental problems. Systems biology has shed new light on industrial biotechnology, deepening our understanding of industr...
Citations
... This is why the circular economy aims to produce resistant products based on recycled or reused raw materials, thus maintaining a social responsibility. In addition, it seeks to highlight the role that engineering has in the construction of a sustainable society based on a circular economy using an undeniable connection relationship (Prieto-Sandoval et al. 2017;Stefanakis and Nikolaou 2021). Sustainability is based on three pillars: social, economic, and environmental. ...
... One way to adapt these products to a sustainable and promising future is through mathematical descriptions of cells and microbial consortia to better understand them, especially for in silico research and cell models. Biological engineering is capable of accelerating the growth and construction of these cells and microbial consortia to generate higher yields, also having zero emissions and good resources from bioprocess engineering, thus generating sustainable technological systems (Straathof et al. 2019). ...
Integration of processes is proposed in this chapter to describe the production of bioenergy and value-added co-products via a biorefinery approach. Bioprocessing of biofuels is based on recovery of waste (pretreatment), transformation thermochemistry–biochemistry, and finally the combined heat and power (CHP), also known as cogeneration (production of electricity or mechanical power via useful thermal energy). CHP can use a variety of fuels, both fossil and renewable-based. The proposed technology for coproducing bioenergy and bioproducts increases the benefit and sustainability relative to fossil-driven products. This will allow optimizing the energy consumption of the process in the future while maintaining production without affecting the environment and society. Likewise, the implementation and specialized software tools for the simulation and calculations of process and environmental intensification indicators are described. A novel diagram was proposed that describes process integration via a sustainable biorefinery approach using wastes and agro-industrial residues. The above reveals that the generated methodology can be considered for control, multi-scale-up, and optimization of bioprocesses purposes.
... One of the major limitations of this approach is the computational power required for the high-resolution simulations, which can partially be relieved with the use of compartment models [24][25][26]. In recent years, the CFD-CRD modelling approach gained widespread attention, as it opens avenues towards more rational scale-up and optimization of industrial-scale bioreactors [27][28][29]. ...
... Therefore, the growth of the bioeconomy will be underpinned for example, by advances in industrial biotechnology (IB) (Donohoue et al., 2018), synthetic biology (Vickers et al., 2017), and; artificial intelligence and digital technologies (Niazi et al., 2019) whilst developing sustainable products and processes (Straathof et al., 2019;Hierro-Iglesias et al., 2021;Hierro-Iglesias et al., 2022). ...
The transformation of the chemical engineering profession is occurring in response to the industry needs of the rapidly-developing bioeconomy and biosector across Europe. To meet these requirements, a new Biotechnology and Bioprocessing module has been designed and offered to Chemical Engineering undergraduates at Aston University, UK. This module bridges chemical engineering and biosciences disciplines, providing students with new skills and knowledge to better understand the opportunities available to chemical engineering professionals within the biosector. Here, we evaluate how the use of digital technologies enhances the student’s learning experience using a range of innovative learning activities delivered in a digital environment. The student’s and author’s perceptions are evaluated, and future improvements identified. This module will contribute to preparing graduates for a successful career in the highly competitive landscape of the bioeconomy and biosector. This pedagogical approach prepares graduates for, hybrid and remote study and working patterns and; changing industrial and digital learning demands.
... Como, por exemplo na agricultura, com a produção de cultivares transgênicas (Vargas et al., 2018) e na saúde, com a produção de vacinas (Graciano et al., 2019). Portanto, no cenário atual, a biotecnologia vem se consolidando como uma área de pesquisa estratégica para o desenvolvimento científico, tecnológico, econômico, social e ambiental (Straathof et al., 2019;Yeung et al., 2019). ...
O estudo buscou analisar as tendências de pesquisas brasileiras a respeito do binômio biotecnologia-biodiversidade, buscando melhor entender a frequência e o uso essas terminologias em publicações e / ou grupos de pesquisa brasileiros. Na primeira etapa, realizada-se revisão bibliográfica na base de dados Google Scholar , utilizando as palavras-chave “Brasil”, “biotecnologia” ou “biodiversidade” e suas correspondentes em inglês, para artigos publicados no período de 2015-2020. Na segunda etapa, fez-se uma pesquisa secundária de dados do Diretório de Grupos de Pesquisa (DGP). Na terceira etapa, foi realizada uma abordagem de mineração de dados de texto , afim de elucidar o uso do binômio nos textos encontrados na base de dados no Google Scholare no diretório. A análise de conteúdo por meio de nuvem de palavras, revelou que na literatura, se discute o binômio de forma ampla, principalmente sobre a necessidade constante incentivo e investimento na pesquisa e da possibilidade de desenvolvimento de diferentes setores, por meio da concepção de produtos e processos, afim de satisfazer as necessidades da sociedade. No entanto, os grupos de pesquisa discutem o binômio de maneira específica, sobretudo, em torno das áreas de aplicação da biotecnologia e dos produtos advindos das formas de exploração da biodiversidade através da biotecnologia.
... Typical food-competing raw materials used today are glucose, starch, protein-rich meals from soybean and casein hydrolysate, yeast extract, and different peptones [3][4][5][6]. As the world grapples with burgeoning populations and diminishing availability of arable land, a reliance on land-intensive, food-based raw materials for natural product synthesis becomes increasingly unsustainable, and a shift towards more eco-conscious alternatives is needed [7,8]. Recent prominent studies have shown that petroleum-based polystyrene waste, exhibiting a recovery rate of less than 1% due to recalcitrance [9], underutilized lignin side streams from the pulp and paper industry [10] and (often simply disposed) seaweed residuals from ocean farming [11][12][13] can be converted into bulk biofuels and chemicals [14][15][16]. ...
Background
Transforming waste and nonfood materials into bulk biofuels and chemicals represents a major stride in creating a sustainable bioindustry to optimize the use of resources while reducing environmental footprint. However, despite these advancements, the production of high-value natural products often continues to depend on the use of first-generation substrates, underscoring the intricate processes and specific requirements of their biosyntheses. This is also true for Streptomyces lividans, a renowned host organism celebrated for its capacity to produce a wide array of natural products, which is attributed to its genetic versatility and potent secondary metabolic activity. Given this context, it becomes imperative to assess and optimize this microorganism for the synthesis of natural products specifically from waste and nonfood substrates.
Results
We metabolically engineered S. lividans to heterologously produce the ribosomally synthesized and posttranslationally modified peptide bottromycin, as well as the polyketide pamamycin. The modified strains successfully produced these compounds using waste and nonfood model substrates such as protocatechuate (derived from lignin), 4-hydroxybenzoate (sourced from plastic waste), and mannitol (from seaweed). Comprehensive transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses offered insights into how these substrates influenced the cellular metabolism of S. lividans. In terms of production efficiency, S. lividans showed remarkable tolerance, especially in a fed-batch process using a mineral medium containing the toxic aromatic 4-hydroxybenzoate, which led to enhanced and highly selective bottromycin production. Additionally, the strain generated a unique spectrum of pamamycins when cultured in mannitol-rich seaweed extract with no additional nutrients.
Conclusion
Our study showcases the successful production of high-value natural products based on the use of varied waste and nonfood raw materials, circumventing the reliance on costly, food-competing resources. S. lividans exhibited remarkable adaptability and resilience when grown on these diverse substrates. When cultured on aromatic compounds, it displayed a distinct array of intracellular CoA esters, presenting promising avenues for polyketide production. Future research could be focused on enhancing S. lividans substrate utilization pathways to process the intricate mixtures commonly found in waste and nonfood sources more efficiently.
... Although natural organisms have evolved to grow optimally on C1 in the environment, they are not immediately suitable for C1-based biomanufacturing. Such organisms might need to be adapted or engineered to become fermenterphiles, meaning microorganisms perfectly adapted to grow in the environment of a bioreactor 129 . In fact, there have been few successful cases of C1-based biomanufacturing at the industrial scale to date, which all relied on using natural C1-trophic strains, either adapted/evolved or genetically engineered. ...
A true circular carbon economy must upgrade waste greenhouse gases. C1-based biomanufacturing is an attractive solution, in which one carbon (C1) molecules (e.g. CO2, formate, methanol, etc.) are converted by microbial cell factories into value-added goods (i.e. food, feed, and chemicals). To render C1-based biomanufacturing cost-competitive, we must adapt microbial metabolism to perform chemical conversions at high rates and yields. To this end, the biotechnology community has undertaken two (seemingly opposing) paths: optimizing natural C1-trophic microorganisms versus engineering synthetic C1-assimilation de novo in model microorganisms. Here, we pose how these approaches can instead create synergies for strengthening the competitiveness of C1-based biomanufacturing as a whole.
... Furthermore, these processes often require specialized equipment to provide the optimal conditions for the used organisms, which can further increase their costs [13]. Seeking cost-effective strategies for the control of biotechnological processes is one important approach for making biotechnological processes more accessible and competitive [14]. • Time: Certain biotechnological processes, such as protein or metabolite production using microorganisms, bacterial bioleaching, and microbial waste treatment, can, in some cases, be slower compared to conventional processes [5]. ...
Despite the growing prevalence of using living organisms in industry, the control of biotechnological processes remains highly complex and constitutes one of the foremost challenges in these applications. The usage of electromagnetic fields offers a great opportunity to control various biotechnological processes by alternating growth and cell metabolism without influencing the characteristics of the cultivation medium or the products of the biotechnological process. The investigation of electromagnetic field applications across various industries, including food production, medicine, and pollutant mitigation, has yielded substantial insights. We used the scientific databases PubMed and ScienceDirect to select 103 experimental and theoretical articles that included original results suitable for further investigation. This type of search was repeated with every new relevant article iteratively until no new articles could be detected. Notably, even weak, low-frequency magnetic fields can accelerate the growth of certain organisms, further stabilize the bacterial community in activated sludge within wastewater treatment plants, enhance the fermentation capabilities of both yeast and bacteria, enhance metal bioleaching by the activation of bacterial metabolism, or improve the metal tolerance of plants during the phytoremediation process. Moreover, magnetic fields exhibit a promising sustainable possibility for the better control of biotechnological processes, thus making these processes more competitive compared with the currently used long-term unsustainable extraction of metals. Although with these interesting results, these examples represent highly exceptional applications. Despite these examples, the overall application potential of magnetic fields remains largely unexplored and unknown.
... In recent years, biotechnology has steadily gained increased importance in the chemical industry [1][2][3][4]. Biotechnology can offer sustainable alternatives to traditional chemical production methods, using microorganisms and enzymes to produce chemicals with high selectivity and fewer by-products, as well as less hazardous waste than conventional processes. Biotechnological processes also provide the potential to reduce production costs by using cheaper renewable raw materials, while operating at ambient pressure and considerably lower temperatures than traditional chemical processes. ...
The chemical and biotechnology industries are facing new challenges in the use of renewable resources. The complex nature of these materials requires the use of advanced techniques to understand the kinetics of reactions in this context. This study presents an interdisciplinary approach to analyze cofactor coupled enzymatic two-substrate kinetics and competitive two-substrate kinetics in a fast and efficient manner. By studying the adsorption energy distribution (AED), it is possible to determine the individual parameters of the reaction kinetics. In the case of a single alcohol reaction, the AED is able to identify parameters in agreement with the literature with few experimental data points compared to classical methods. In the case of a competitive reaction, AED analysis can automatically determine the number of competing substrates, whereas traditional nonlinear regression requires prior knowledge of this information for parameter identification.
... For heterotrophic microorganism, carbon yield is one of the most important parameters for evaluating their industrial biomanufacturing performance 42 . A typical bioproduction system loses more than 30% of carbon during the production process. ...
In microbial cell factory, CO2 release during acetyl-CoA production from pyruvate significantly decreases the carbon atom economy. Here, we construct and optimize a synthetic carbon conserving pathway named as Sedoheptulose-1,7-bisphosphatase Cycle with Trifunctional PhosphoKetolase (SCTPK) in Escherichia coli. This cycle relies on a generalist phosphoketolase Xfspk and converts glucose into the stoichiometric amounts of acetylphosphate (AcP). Furthermore, genetic circuits responding to AcP positively or negatively are created. Together with SCTPK, they constitute a gene-metabolic oscillator that regulates Xfspk and enzymes converting AcP into valuable chemicals in response to intracellular AcP level autonomously, allocating metabolic flux rationally and improving the carbon atom economy of bioconversion process. Using this synthetic machinery, mevalonate is produced with a yield higher than its native theoretical yield, and the highest titer and yield of 3-hydroxypropionate via malonyl-CoA pathway are achieved. This study provides a strategy for improving the carbon yield of microbial cell factories.
... hosts. Still, one of the main challenges in industrial bioprocess development is the successful 74 transfer of processes from the laboratory to industrial-sized vessels while maintaining desired 75 microbial performance (Straathof et al. 2019). Although microbial behavior in laboratory setups is 76 relatively well understood, this so-called scale-up is often complicated through undesired 77 ...
... As a result, solutions will also have to be 103 found in the microbial domain. Thus, researchers aim to identify and create the so-called 104 fermenterphile geno-and phenotype (Straathof et al. 2019). These strains show robustness to 105 industrial conditions and thus have an unaltered performance when brought to a commercial 106 ...
Rational scale-up strategies to accelerate bioprocess development, require sound knowledge of cellular behaviour under industrial conditions. In this study, the strictly aerobic yeast Yarrowia lipolytica is exposed to repeated oxygen limitations, approximated from a large-scale cultivation. A data-driven multi-omics strategy is deployed to elucidate its transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolic response. Throughout a single perturbation, metabolite and protein levels showed dynamic profiles while they returned to steady state values when aerobic conditions were restored. After repeated oscillations, significant cellular rearrangements were found, with a special focus on central carbon metabolism, oxidative phosphorylation, lipid, and amino acid biosynthesis. Most notably, metabolite levels as well as the catabolic reduction charge are maintained at higher concentrations. Moreover, proteins involved in NADPH-consuming anabolic pathways showed an increased abundance, which is suggested to be compensated for through an increased pentose-phosphate pathway activity. Although dynamics were found on all three omics levels, the proteomic and metabolic changes were in most instances not supported by strong transcriptional changes. Thus, this work suggests that the response of Y. lipolytica to (repeated) oxygen oscillations is strongly regulated by post-transcriptional mechanisms. These findings provide novel insights into potential cellular regulation on an industrial scale, thereby facilitating a more efficient bioprocess development through mitigating any undesired behaviour.
Key points
- Dynamic response of Yarrowia lipolytica to industrial oxygen profiles.
- New metabolic steady states are found after exposure to repeated oxygen oscillations.
- A multi-omics strategy elucidates the importance of post-transcriptional mechanisms.
