From microbiomes to biofactories

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We all know the modern world depends on refining oil into everything from energy (e.g. gasoline) to materials (e.g. plastics, pesticides and pharmaceuticals). However, this progress also has serious environmental costs from the production of climate changing greenhouse gases (GHGs) to other pollutants that degrade the quality of life. The truth is that we cannot continue to rely solely on a nonrenewable resource like oil without undermining our future success and the health of the planet. The problem is not about peak oil, it is about finding a sustainable way to harvest energy and materials from our surroundings that minimizes environmental cost. While there are a number of technological solutions being discussed, including conventional and renewable power generation, next generation transportation, and smart grid design, more natural solutions may be hidden all around us. Beyond the limits of our senses exists an infinitely diverse microbial world extending into every imaginable habitat and thriving under powerful extremes. For over 3.5 billion years, interacting microbial communties have been driving energy and material tranfromations that create and sustain planetary living conditions. As a result, although the vast majority of microbes in nature remain uncultivated, they represent a virtually limitless reservoir of genetic information and metabolic potential. By harnessing the power of microbial communities we can implement the solutions we need to reverse centuries of human induced environmental damage and evolve a more sustainable way of life. This project uses an innovative search function based on micobial biosensors and environmental DNA to construct Biofactories driving sustainable and selective biomass conversion to energy and materials. We will create a new learning curve that can be translated through emerging public and private sector partnerships into scalable process streams to build our global future. Our biotechnology innovation involves parallel deep device mining combined with cloud computing approaches to recover and define catalytic and regulatory networks underlying microbial community metabolism. These devices can be programmed into microbial consortia engineered for consolidated bioprocessing to produce commodity chemicals and materials. Microbial biofactories are tunable to local inputs and product profiles, and more robust to process perturbations including toxic intermediates and end product inhibition. From an ocean, mining and energy sector perspective, biofactories have direct application to resource management, environmental monitoring and bioremediation. From a forestry, wastewater treatment and biorefining sector perspective, biofactories producing energy and materials from biomass can drive consolidated bioprocesses while fulfilling the demand for reduced carbon emissions.