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。人们正非常关注通过利用微生物的生物合成潜力从可持续的原料中生产这些材料。重要的是要注意，丙烯酸塑料的许多应用不能被生物塑料取代。这方面的一个例子是在飞机窗户中使用丙烯酸，其中安全性，强度和耐用性是至关重要的。璐彩特国际有限公司目前生产全球每年使用的400万吨甲基丙烯酸酯（ME）中的约三分之一。有机玻璃已经建立了一种在微生物中生产甲基丙烯酸酯的生物合成途径，从而可以改善丙烯酸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耐受生物来改善该过程。其主要原因是ME对大多数常用的生物技术生物体具有相对毒性。生物技术底盘生物体通常是根据科学上的熟悉程度而不是生物学上的可能性来选择的。出于这个原因，很明显，有一个更好的底盘生物ME生产的工业需求，我们建议使用富集培养方法来识别这些生物和他们的具体性状的可持续生物生产的甲基丙烯酸酯的塑料工业。这个学生的目的是确定环境中的遗传人才，这将有助于途径的改善，宿主菌株的耐受性和饲料偏好。

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.