21ENGBIO: Plant microcompartment engineering for green production

环境和工业面临的巨大压力意味着，必须开发更环保的方法来生产社会所需的材料和产品。植物提供了我们使用的大部分可再生产品和材料，通过工程提供了巨大的机会，进一步创新它们在生物经济中的使用，以实现有利可图、可扩展和可持续的生产。这项工程生物学突破奖研究将设计一种基于细菌微室的创新系统，以扩大植物作为生物工厂的潜力，适用于从生物医药到生物塑料的行业。它的主要目标是：(1)在植物中安装细菌微室壳，作为封装新酶的支架；(2)在植物生产的微室中封装工业相关的酶催化剂，作为这一工程方法的概念验证。该项目将产生所需的概念验证，以实现我们如何利用植物为更绿色、更环保的未来提供燃料的突破。

The myriad pressures on the environment and industry mean that greener methods must be developed for producing the materials and products society needs. Plants provide the majority of the renewable products and materials we use, and through engineering provide tremendous opportunities to further innovate upon their uses in the bioeconomy to achieve profitable, scalable, sustainable production. This Engineering Biology Breakthroughs Award research will engineer an innovative system based on bacterial microcompartments to expand the potential of plants as biofactories for industries from biomedicine to bioplastics.It's key aims are to:(1) install a bacterial microcompartment shell within plants as a scaffold for encapsulating novel enzymes,(2) encapsulate an industrially relevant enzyme catalyst within a plant-produced microcompartment as a proof-of-concept for this engineering approach.This project will generate the proof-of-concept required to deliver breakthroughs in how we can use plants to fuel a greener, more environmentally sustainable future.