Novel Processes for Biopolymer Production

首席研究员的总体目标是研究新型聚羟基烷酸（PHA）的生物合成，PHA具有空间结构，因此赋予该材料特定的物理性质。微观结构将通过定期改变提供给能够合成PHA的微生物的营养物质来实现。不同的营养物质导致聚合反应形成不同的前体，并导致同源和共聚物在纳米尺度结构的球形颗粒中有控制的沉积。此外，可以设计营养开关策略来生成单个聚合物链水平的结构，从而产生可以自组装成具有有用物理性质的特定形态的嵌段共聚物。这种生物合成方法将进一步发展，以产生特定的二嵌段共聚物和尾部共聚物，并对其物理性质进行评估。除了合成这种具有改良价值的pha外，该材料的生物合成将在酵母厌氧代谢的背景下进行研究，扩展初步研究，证明pha的厌氧生物合成是可能的。生产具有更高价值的“智能”材料的联合努力，以及对生物体进行代谢工程操作以提高生产过程的效率，可能会对生物降解塑料技术产生重大影响。

0109383SriencThe Principal Investigator's overall objective is to study the biosynthesis of novel types of polyhydroxyalkanoic acids (PHA), which are spatially structured and, therefore, confer specific physical properties to this material. The microstructure will be achieved by periodic alteration of the nutrients supplied to the microorganisms that are capable of PHA synthesis. The different nutrients result in the formation of different precursors for the polymerization reaction and lead to the controlled deposition of homo- and copolymer in spherical granules with architecture structured at the nanometer length scale. Furthermore, the nutrient switching strategy can be designed to generate structure at the individual polymer chain level resulting in block-copolymers that can self-assemble into specific morphologies that could have useful physical properties. This biosynthesis approach will be further developed to generate specific diblock- and tailback-copolymers and their physical properties will be evaluated. In addition to the synthesis of such PHAs with improved value, the biosynthesis of this material will be investigated in the context of anaerobic metabolism of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae extending preliminary studies that demonstrate that anaerobic biosynthesis of PHAs is possible. The combined effort of producing 'smarter' materials of higher value together with metabolic engineering manipulations of the organisms for more efficient production processes could have significant impact on the technology of biodegradable plastics.