21ENGBIO: Plant microcompartment engineering for green production

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The myriad pressures on the environment and industry mean that greener methods must be developed for producing the materials and products society needs. Plants provide the majority of the renewable products and materials we use, and through engineering provide tremendous opportunities to further innovate upon their uses in the bioeconomy to achieve profitable, scalable, sustainable production. This Engineering Biology Breakthroughs Award research will engineer an innovative system based on bacterial microcompartments to expand the potential of plants as biofactories for industries from biomedicine to bioplastics.It's key aims are to:(1) install a bacterial microcompartment shell within plants as a scaffold for encapsulating novel enzymes,(2) encapsulate an industrially relevant enzyme catalyst within a plant-produced microcompartment as a proof-of-concept for this engineering approach.This project will generate the proof-of-concept required to deliver breakthroughs in how we can use plants to fuel a greener, more environmentally sustainable future.