Building Synthetic Biofilm Consortia for Polyfluorinated Chemicals Biodegradation

微生物自然存在于被称为生物膜的群落中，天然生物膜被广泛用于废水处理。例如，天然生物膜被用来去除废水中的硝酸盐。该项目的长期目标是设计能够有效降解多氟物质(PFAS)的生物膜，PFAS是一种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使社会受益，因为它提供了关于全氟辛烷磺酸生物膜和生物降解的基础知识，并为未来在制造、能源和医药方面的应用创造了框架。通过公众参与、教育和培训下一代科学家，将为社会带来更多好处。生物膜是一种混合物种的联合体，它创造了具有分布式任务和功能的结构化微环境，与浮游细胞相比，这些微环境赋予了显著的生存优势。虽然天然生物膜很容易用于废水处理，如反硝化，但人们对如何有目的地创建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，作为开发和制造以使用为灵感的生物膜的框架，使其成为一系列应用的坚固结构。建议设计对环境无害的合成生物膜联合体，该联合体可并入生物反应器系统，以有效地生物降解在环境中积累的模型多氟化合物，这些化合物越来越受到健康和环境的关注和监管的关注。具体地说，该项目将(1)学习设计和控制由两种细菌组成的坚固的人工生物膜联合体的形成，以(2)有效地降解全氟辛烷磺酸化合物，这将在易于配置和成本效益高的生物膜载体系统上实施，用于未来的生物反应器操作(3)。将询问和确定操纵由工程细菌组成的生物膜的组成和特性的分子机制，这些生物膜通常彼此之间没有关联。针对全氟辛烷磺酸的降解将为降解难以生物降解的部分创造新的创新生物催化活动，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品的顽固漏斗点。在该项目中产生的知识和系统将能够设计新的生物膜材料，用于生物修复以外的潜在变革性生物技术过程，例如用于生物制造、能源和生物医学应用，以及作为功能和/或响应性涂层。将开展教育和推广活动，以扩大STEM的参与，并教育公众有关生物技术方法和基因工程系统的使用。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.