Building Synthetic Biofilm Consortia for Polyfluorinated Chemicals Biodegradation

微生物自然地存在于称为生物膜的群落中，并且天然生物膜被广泛用于处理废水。例如，天然生物膜用于从废水中去除硝酸盐。该项目的长期目标是设计能够有效降解多氟化合物（PFAS）的生物膜，PFAS是一组对健康和环境有影响的主要水污染物。该项目的成功完成将通过提供生物膜和PFAS生物降解的基础知识，并为未来在制造业，能源和医学中的应用创造框架，从而造福社会。通过公众参与、教育和培训下一代科学家，将为社会带来更多的好处。 生物膜是混合物种的联合体，它们创造了具有分布式任务和功能的结构化微环境，与增殖细胞相比，这些微环境赋予了显着的生存优势。虽然天然生物膜很容易用于废水处理，如脱氮，但对如何有目的地产生合成生物膜知之甚少。该项目旨在确定设计原则并建立知识库，作为开发和制造使用启发的生物膜的框架，作为一系列应用的稳健结构。建议设计环境安全的合成生物膜聚生体，其可以并入生物反应器系统中，用于有效生物降解在环境中积累的被称为PFAS的模型多氟化合物，并且具有越来越多的健康和环境关注以及监管焦点。具体而言，该项目将（1）学习设计和控制由两种细菌组成的强大人工生物膜财团的形成，以（2）有效降解PFAS化合物，该化合物将在易于配置和具有成本效益的生物膜载体系统上实施，用于未来的生物反应器操作（3）。分子机制将被询问和鉴定，以操纵由通常彼此不相关的工程菌组成的生物膜的组成和性质。靶向PFAS降解将创造新的创新生物催化活性，用于降解难以生物降解的部分，这些部分是进入我们水道的大量使用的商业农用化学品和药物的不可替代的漏斗点。在这个项目中产生的知识和系统将使新的生活生物膜材料的设计潜在的转型生物技术过程超越生物修复，如生物制造，能源和生物医学应用，并作为功能和/或响应涂层。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Microorganisms naturally occur in communities known as biofilms and natural biofilms are widely used for the treatment wastewater. For example, natural biofilms are used to remove nitrate from wastewater. The long-term goal of this project is to design biofilms that can efficiently degrade polyfluorinated substances (PFAS), a major group of water contaminants that have health and environmental implications. The successful completion of the project will benefit society by providing fundamental knowledge of biofilms and biodegradation of PFAS, and creating the framework for future applications in manufacturing, energy and medicine. Additional benefits to society will be achieved through public engagement, education and training the next generation of scientists. Biofilms are mixed-species consortia that create structured microenvironments with distributed tasks and functions that confer significant survival advantages compared to planktonic cells. Although natural biofilms are readily used for wastewater treatment such as denitrification, little is known about how to purposefully create synthetic biofilms. This project aims to identify the design principles and establish the knowledge base as a framework for the development and manufacturing of use-inspired biofilms as robust structures for a range of applications. It is proposed to design environmentally safe synthetic biofilm consortia that can be incorporated into a bioreactor system for the efficient biodegradation of model polyfluorinated compounds known as PFAS that accumulate in the environment and are of increasing health and environmental concern and regulatory focus. Specifically, this project will (1) learn to design and control the formation of a robust artificial biofilm consortia composed of two bacterial species for (2) the efficient degradation of PFAS compounds that will be implemented on an easy to configure and cost-effective biofilm carrier system for future bioreactor operations (3). Molecular mechanisms will be interrogated and identified with which to manipulate the composition and properties of biofilms composed of engineered bacteria that are not typically associated with each other. Targeting PFAS degradation will create new innovative biocatalytic activities for the degradation of hard to biodegrade moieties that are recalcitrant funnel points of heavily used commercial agrichemicals and pharmaceuticals that enter our waterways. Knowledge and systems generated in this project will enable the design of new living biofilm materials for potentially transformational biotechnology processes beyond bioremediation, such as for biomanufacturing, energy and biomedical applications and as functional and/or responsive coatings. Education and outreach activities will be developed to broaden STEM participation and educate the public about biotechnological approaches and the use of genetically engineered systems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.