CAREER: Engineering Interspecies Communication and Synthetic Microbial Consortia

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The biosynthesis of compounds of industrial importance often requires engineering and optimization of complex metabolic pathways. Traditionally, these processes have employed a clonal population of recombinant microbes such as E. coli or yeast. There are many limitations of using a single population that could be alleviated or addressed by using a mixture of several organisms, including metabolic load and the number of exogenous elements that can be contained and optimized in a single cell. The long-term goal of this research is to generate synthetic microbial consortia that can be used as a generic platform for diverse bioprocessing applications, such as chemical synthesis and bioremediation. This strategy is inspired by naturally occurring microbial consortia. These ubiquitous communities consist of multiple populations that coexist and carry out complex chemical processes and physiological functions to enable survival of the community. Cell-cell communication, or microbial quorum-sensing, is essential for coordinating the behavior of the microbial populations. The overall objective of the current project is to engineer new quorum sensing-based components and systems that will enable cell-cell communication dependent gene expression in both Gram-negative and Gram-positive organisms and to use these systems to establish a coordinated multi-species community of microbes.Broader impacts: For the outreach component of this project, the PI will develop a program for K-12 students on microbial communities that seeks to impress upon students the important roles such communities play in human health and biotechnology. The PI will also develop a scientific outreach program for graduate students that focuses on mentoring and seeks to increase the number of women in engineering faculty positions. The integrated research and educational plan will educate undergraduate and graduate students in the use of protein engineering and synthetic biology. Students will be exposed to an evolving, interdisciplinary approach to scientific research that will prepare them to solve complex problems in chemical engineering and biotechnology.