19-ERACoBioTech SYNBIOGAS: Synthetic landfill microbiomes for enhanced anaerobic digestion to biogas

木质纤维素植物生物质是由社会、农业和工业产生的最丰富的废物。到2025年，全球城市每年将产生约22亿吨固体废物生物质，对当地和全球范围的健康和经济产生重大影响。微生物的自然群落（微生物组）将废弃生物质转化为富含甲烷的沼气，可用作可持续和可再生的绿色能源，以产生电力，热能和电力，并将生物甲烷注入国家天然气网和生产运输燃料。厌氧消化（AD）工厂和垃圾填埋场是工程环境，利用这些微生物过程进行废物分解和沼气生产。欧盟是全球最大的生物质沼气生产国，拥有超过17，000个AD工厂，因此，在AD工厂和垃圾填埋场将固体废物残渣微生物转化为沼气提供了前所未有的机会，可以利用关键的使能技术实现可持续的生物基经济，以促进绿色能源生产。反过来，将废弃生物质转化为生物甲烷将减轻废物残留物对环境和社会的影响。然而，负责厌氧消化的微生物的代谢功能知之甚少，并且大多数先前的研究集中在动物肠道微生物上，这些微生物通常用于将微生物以浆料的形式引入厌氧消化装置中。微生物用于生物质转化的工业应用的主要瓶颈之一是低底物特异性、低温耐受性和不能在反应条件下最佳地进行。垃圾填埋场中发现的天然微生物代表了一个未开发的生物质降解酶多样性的储存库，具有增强现有工业生物质转化过程的潜力。垃圾填埋场微生物已经适应了工程环境，矿化不同的固体废物类型，产生富含甲烷的沼气，因此是厌氧消化过程生物强化的良好候选者。SYNBIOGAS联盟是一个学术-工业合作伙伴关系，将整合各种尖端技术，分析，工程和计算方法，用于表征垃圾填埋场生物质降解微生物组。微生物分离，DNA测序，酶特性和填埋场微生物生物量转化过程的计算建模将为优化的合成填埋场微生物组（SLM）的设计和验证提供信息，以增强AD工厂和填埋场的废物生物量转化，并开发可易于被工业采用的SLM应用程序。工程生物质降解微生物组是一个新的研究前沿，具有许多新的应用，包括生物增强和优化AD和垃圾填埋场系统中的生物质转化，以增强废物管理，环境保护和可持续强化可再生能源发电的生物基经济。

Lignocellulosic plant biomass is the most abundant waste product generated by society, agriculture and industry. By 2025, global cities willgenerate approximately 2.2 billion tonnes of solid waste biomass per year, with significant impacts upon health and the economy at bothlocal and global scales. Natural communities of microorganisms (microbiomes) convert waste biomass to methane-rich biogas that can beused as a sustainable and renewable green-energy source to generate electricity, heat and power, and biomethane for injection into thenational gas grid and production of transport fuels. Anaerobic digestion (AD) plants and landfill sites are engineered environments wherethese microbial processes are harnessed for waste decomposition and biogas production. The EU is the largest global producer of biogasfrom biomass, with over 17,000 AD plants, and consequently, the microbiological conversion of solid waste residues to biogas in AD plantsand landfill sites presents an unprecedented opportunity to leverage key enabling technologies for a sustainable bio-based economy forgreen-energy production. In turn, conversion of waste biomass to biomethane will mitigate the escalating environmental and social impactsof waste residues. However, the metabolic function of microorganisms responsible for anaerobic digestion is poorly understood, and mostprevious studies have focused on animal gut microorganisms that are typically used to incoluate microorganisms into anaerobic digestionplants as slurry. One of the major bottlenecks to industrial application of microorganisms for biomass-conversion is low substrate specificity,low temperature tolerance, and an inability to perform optimally under reaction conditions. Natural microorganisms found in landfill sitesrepresent an unexplored repository of biomass-degrading enzyme diversity with the potential to enhance existing industrialbiomass-conversion processes. Landfill microorganisms are already adapted to engineered environments, mineralise diverse solid wastetypes, produce methane-rich biogas, and are therefore good candidates for the bioaugmentation of anaerobic digestion processes. The SYNBIOGAS consortium is an academic-industry partnership that will integrate diverse and cutting-edge technological, analytical,engineering and computational approaches for characterisation of the landfill biomass-degrading microbiome. Microbial isolations, DNAsequencing, enzyme characterisation and computational modelling of landfill microbial biomass-conversion processes will inform the designand validation of optimised synthetic landfill microbiomes (SLMs) for enhanced waste biomass-conversion in AD plants and landfill sites, andto develop applications of the SLM that can be readily adopted by industry. Engineering biomass-degrading microbiomes is a new researchfrontier with many novel applications, including bioaugmentation and optimisation of biomass conversion in AD and landfill systems towardsan enhanced bio-based economy for waste management, environmental protection, and sustainable intensification of renewable energygeneration.