SynBioCO2 - A synthetic biology platform for biomanufacturing with carbon dioxide

更可持续发展的全球趋势鼓励将生物质用作可再生原料。生物质现在被用来生产能源的生物燃料，蛋白质和核酸作为治疗药物，生物催化的酶，这些都是它在食品和食品配料制造中的应用。虽然生物质比化石燃料更可持续，但生物质供应有限。认识到这一点，政府正计划在2022年发布其生物质战略，以审查英国可用的可持续生物质的数量。在此之前，英国商业、能源和工业策略部(BEIS)于2021年11月发布了生物质政策声明，阐述了政府优先使用生物质的主要原则。这种优先顺序清楚地表明，有限的生物质供应及其物流是制造业的关键挑战。我们已经看到了过度依赖单一资源(例如化石燃料)如何导致资源枯竭，以及地缘政治因素如何影响资源可获得性(例如COVID疫苗和乌克兰对天然气的战争)，这两者都推高了基本需求的价格。因此，至关重要的是，我们必须通过以下方式扩大我们的原料选择：(1)放弃原始生物质，转而探索废弃生物质；(2)确定可用于生物制造的可持续替代原料。该项目的重点是利用空气中的二氧化碳作为生物制造中可持续的替代原料。我们将设计和优化一种利用微生物将空气中的二氧化碳转化为聚羟基烷酸的微生物，聚羟基烷酸是一种生物基和可生物降解的塑料。这项技术的发展将有利于英国生物经济的可持续增长，根据英国生物经济战略，该行业在2014年价值2200亿GB，预计到2030年将达到4400亿GB。它还将使我们能够挖掘二氧化碳的价值，二氧化碳是一种高度可获得但未得到充分开发的资源。

The global trend towards more sustainable development has encouraged the use of biomass as a renewable feedstock. Biomass is now used to produce biofuels for energy, proteins and nucleic acids as therapeutics, enzymes for biocatalysis, and these are on top of its applications in food and food ingredient manufacturing. While biomass is more sustainable than fossil fuel, biomass supply is limited. Recognizing this, the government is planning to publish its Biomass Strategy in 2022 to review the amount of sustainable biomass available to the UK. Prior to this, the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published the Biomass Policy Statement in Nov 2021 to set out the government's key principles for a biomass priority use framework. This prioritization clearly signals limited biomass supply and its logistics as key challenges for manufacturing. We have seen how over-reliance on a single resource (e.g., fossil fuel) can lead to depletion and how geopolitical factors can influence resource accessibility (e.g., COVID vaccines and Ukraine war on gas), both of which push prices up for essential needs. It is thus critical that we broaden our feedstock options by (1) moving away from virgin biomass to explore waste biomass and (2) identifying alternative sustainable feedstock that can be used for biomanufacturing. This project focuses on the use of carbon dioxide in air as an alternative sustainable feedstock in biomanufacturing. We will engineer and optimize a carbon dioxide utilizing microorganism that converts carbon dioxide in air into polyhydroxyalkanoate, a biobased and biodegradable plastic. Development of this technology will benefit the sustainable growth of the UK bioeconomy, a sector worth £220bn in 2014 and expected to reach £440bn in 2030 according to the UK Bioeconomy Strategy. It will also allow us to tap into the value of carbon dioxide, a highly accessible but insufficiently explored resource.