Bioactive terpenoids as high performance ingredients for industry

英国要实现净零排放目标，整个工业部门都迫切需要用可持续的生物原料取代对石化原料的依赖。克罗达是一家总部位于英国的跨国公司，在高性能成分和技术方面处于全球领先地位，世界上一些最成功的品牌在广泛的市场上都可以找到这些成分和技术，包括个人、健康和作物护理。克罗达公司最近进行了一次执行委员会级别的产品组合审查，确定有必要将创新活动的重点放在工业生物技术上，以此作为在广泛领域实现可持续和生物基配料的途径。萜类化合物是世界上最大和最多样化的天然产品类别之一，为从香料和香料到人类健康和个人护理的不同行业提供一系列功能。约克大学的格雷厄姆实验室在从植物中发现和开发不同类别的萜类化合物方面处于世界领先地位，最近一直在与克罗达合作，探索使用这些化合物来取代该公司在一系列工业部门供应的成分组合中的石化衍生产品的潜力。根据概念验证工作，显然存在巨大的潜力。挑战在于，许多这些以萜类为基础的天然产品无法在商业规模上获得，因为它们目前只能从生产它们的工厂获得相对少量的产品。该项目将通过建立在克罗达专有平台上发挥作用的选定萜类化合物的生物合成路线来应对这一挑战，并利用合成/工程生物学和工业生物技术的组合开发新的生产平台，使其能够进行商业放大和开发新的基于生物的产品。Croda已经在所谓的异源宿主平台上拥有基于发酵的放大专业知识，这将补充将在约克大学进行的宿主平台的基因发现和实验室规模工程。已经确定了作物护理部门的早期线索，这可能对农业的可持续性产生重大影响。

For the UK to achieve its Net Zero targets there is an urgent need across industrial sectors to replace the reliance on petrochemical based feedstocks with sustainable bio-based feedstock. Croda is a UK based multinational company and global leader in high performance ingredients and technologies that are found in some of the most successful brands in the world across a wide range of markets including Personal, Health and Crop Care. Croda has recently undertaken an Executive Committee level product portfolio review and identified a need to focus innovation activities upon industrial biotechnology as a route to sustainable and biobased ingredients across a broad range of areas. Terpenoids represent one of the largest and most diverse classes of natural products in the world, providing an array of functionalities for different industry sectors ranging from flavour and fragrance to human health and personal care. The Graham laboratory at the University of York is world leading in the discovery and development of different classes of terpenoids from plants and have recently been collaborating with Croda to explore the potential of using these to replace petrochemical derived products in the company's portfolio of ingredients being supplied across a range of industrial sectors. Based on proof of concept work, it is clear there is huge potential. The challenge is that many of these terpene based natural products are not available at commercial scale as they are currently only available in relatively small amounts from the plants that produce them. This project will address this challenge by establishing the biosynthetic route to selected terpenoids that perform in Croda's proprietary platforms and by using a combination of synthetic/engineering biology and industrial biotechnology develop new production platforms that will allow commercial scale-up and development of new biobased products. Croda already have expertise in fermentation based scale-up in so called heterologous host platforms that will complement the gene discovery and laboratory scale engineering of host platforms that will be performed at the University of York. Early leads have already been identified for the Crop Care sector which could have a major impact on the sustainability of agriculture.