Collaborative Research: Synthetic Lichen Co-Cultures for Sustainable Generation of Biotechnology Products

许多药物是由微生物产生的，用于治疗人类和动物的疾病。对于这些药物中的许多，制造成本是一个严重的问题。其中一个主要成本是这些微生物生长和生产药物所需的营养。该项目的目标是通过同时培养两种微生物来降低营养成本和总体生产成本。有一种微生物是光合作用的。它将利用阳光和二氧化碳产生营养物质，然后被另一种微生物消耗。这消除了购买昂贵营养素的需要，降低了药品制造成本。在这个项目中，目标产品将是内溶素，这是一种针对鸡感染的新型治疗方法，可以潜在地避免抗生素在家禽行业的广泛使用。该项目还将教育从高中到研究生的学生关于共培养的知识，为他们在不断增长的生物制造行业就业做好准备。在商业上，像曲霉这样的丝状真菌生产酶、抗生素和代谢物。经济分析表明，有机碳原料的成本是这些工艺的主要成本。在自然界中，丝状真菌被发现是地衣的一部分，地衣是光合作用的自养生物(光生生物)及其伙伴之间的共生，通常是一种类似曲霉的真菌。光生生物提供有机碳，利用二氧化碳和阳光产生，与真菌物种配对。这些真菌会产生有用的生物化学物质。该项目的目标是实施合成地衣共培养，作为生产新型抗菌肽的变革性生物制造平台。将确定允许曲霉和蓝藻成功生长的培养条件。这两个合作伙伴之间的互动将使用基因组规模的共培养模型来表征，该模型结合了转录组学、蛋白质组学和代谢数据。这个模型将被用来确定优化我们合成地衣的生长和生产能力的基质成分和栽培制度。然后，合成的地衣将产生一种新型的抗菌肽--内溶素，它可以取代抗生素用于治疗鸡的细菌感染。总体而言，该项目将开发一个生产各种治疗分子和蛋白质的低成本平台。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Many drugs are produced by microbes and used to treat diseases in humans and animals. The cost of manufacturing is a serious issue for many of these drugs. One major cost is for the nutrients required by these microbes to grow and produce the drug. The goal of this project is to lower nutrient costs and overall production costs by growing two microbes together. One microbe is photosynthetic. It will utilize sunlight and carbon dioxide to generate nutrients that are then consumed by the other microbe. This removes the need to purchase expensive nutrients, decreasing the cost of drug manufacture. In this project, the target product will be endolysin, a novel treatment against chicken infections that can potentially avoid the widespread use of antibiotics in the poultry industry. The project will also educate students from the high school to the graduate level about co-cultures, preparing them for employment in the growing biomanufacturing industry.Commercially, filamentous fungi like Aspergillus produce enzymes, antibiotics, and metabolites. Economic analysis reveals that the cost of organic carbon feedstocks is a major cost for these processes. In nature, filamentous fungi are found as part of lichens, which are a symbiosis between a photosynthetic autotroph (photobiont) and its partner, typically a fungus similar to Aspergillus. The photobiont provides organic carbon, generated using carbon dioxide and sunlight, to partner fungal species. The fungi generate useful biochemicals. The goal of this project is to implement synthetic lichen co-cultures as a transformative biomanufacturing platform for the production of a novel antimicrobial peptide. Cultivation conditions that allow Aspergillus and cyanobacteria to grow successfully together will be identified. Interactions between the two partners will be characterized using genome scale co-culture models that incorporate transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolic data. This model will be used to determine the media composition and cultivation regime that optimizes the growth and production capabilities of our synthetic lichen. The synthetic lichen will then generate a novel anti-microbial peptide, endolysin, which could replace antibiotics for the treatment of bacterial infections in chickens. Overall, the project will develop a low-cost platform for the production of a wide variety of therapeutic molecules and proteins.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.