Environmental enrichment culture as a route to the biosynthesis of platform chemicals for the plastics industry

全球丙烯酸市场估计为每年60 - 80亿美元。目前丙烯酸塑料工业的大部分前体材料来自不可持续的化石燃料。目前的重点是利用微生物的生物合成潜力，利用可持续的原料生产这些材料。值得注意的是，丙烯酸塑料的许多应用不能用生物塑料代替。这方面的一个例子是丙烯酸在飞机窗户的使用，安全性，强度和耐久性是至关重要的。目前，全球每年使用的400万吨甲基丙烯酸酯（ME）中约有三分之一是Lucite国际有限公司生产的。建立了利用微生物生产甲基丙烯酸酯的生物合成途径，提高了丙烯酸酯生产的成本和可持续性。这种合成生物学方法已经成功地生产了ME，但需要更多的ME耐受性生物来改进这一过程。造成这种情况的主要原因是ME对大多数常用的生物技术生物体具有相对毒性。生物技术底盘生物通常是根据科学熟悉度而不是生物学可能性来选择的。出于这个原因，很明显，工业上需要更好的基质生物来生产ME，我们建议使用富集培养方法来识别这些生物及其特定特性，以实现塑料工业甲基丙烯酸酯的可持续生物生产。这项研究的目的是在环境中发现有助于途径改善、宿主菌株耐受性和原料偏好的基因天赋。

The global acrylic acid market is estimated to be $6-8 billion USD per annum. The majority of the precursor materials for the acrylic plastic industry currently come from unsustainable fossil fuels. Significant attention is being aimed at producing these materials from sustainable feedstocks by exploiting the biosynthetic potential of microorganisms. It is important to note that many applications of acrylic plastics cannot be substituted with bioplastics. An example of this is the use of acrylic in aircraft windows where safety, strength and durability are paramount. Lucite International Ltd. currently produce approximately one third of the 4 million tonnes of methacrylate ester (ME) that is used globally each year. Lucite have established a biosynthetic pathway to produce methacrylate ester in microorganisms so that the cost and sustainability of acrylic production can be improved. This synthetic biology approach has led to the successful production of ME, but more ME tolerant organisms are required to improve the process. The predominant reason for this is that ME is relatively toxic to most commonly used biotechnology organisms. Biotechnology chassis organisms are usually selected based upon scientific familiarity, not by biological possibility. For this reason, it is clear that there is an industrial need for better chassis organisms for ME production and we propose to use an enrichment culture approach to identify these organisms and their specific traits for the sustainable bioproduction of methacrylate ester for the plastics industry. The aims of this studentship are to identify genetic talent in the environment that will contribute to pathway improvement, host strain tolerance and feedstock preference.