Bioactive terpenoids as high performance ingredients for industry

为了实现英国的净零排放目标，工业部门迫切需要用可持续的生物基原料取代对石化基原料的依赖。Croda是一家总部位于英国的跨国公司，是高性能成分和技术的全球领导者，在个人、健康和作物护理等广泛市场的一些最成功品牌中找到了这些成分和技术。Croda最近进行了执行委员会一级的产品组合审查，并确定需要将创新活动重点放在工业生物技术上，作为在广泛领域实现可持续和生物基成分的途径。萜类化合物是世界上最大和最多样化的天然产品之一，为不同的工业部门提供了一系列的功能，从香精和香料到人类健康和个人护理。约克大学的Graham实验室在从植物中发现和开发不同类别的萜类化合物方面处于世界领先地位，最近与Croda合作，探索使用这些化合物取代石油化工衍生产品的潜力，该公司的成分组合已供应给一系列工业部门。基于概念验证工作，很明显存在巨大的潜力。面临的挑战是，这些以萜烯为基础的天然产物中，有许多无法实现商业规模，因为它们目前只能从生产它们的植物中获得相对少量的产品。该项目将通过建立在Croda专有平台上运行的选定萜类化合物的生物合成途径，并通过结合合成/工程生物学和工业生物技术开发新的生产平台来解决这一挑战，这将允许商业规模扩大和开发新的生物基产品。Croda已经在所谓的异种宿主平台的发酵放大方面拥有专业知识，这将补充将在约克大学进行的基因发现和宿主平台的实验室规模工程。已经确定了作物护理部门的早期线索，这可能对农业的可持续性产生重大影响。

For the UK to achieve its Net Zero targets there is an urgent need across industrial sectors to replace the reliance on petrochemical based feedstocks with sustainable bio-based feedstock. Croda is a UK based multinational company and global leader in high performance ingredients and technologies that are found in some of the most successful brands in the world across a wide range of markets including Personal, Health and Crop Care. Croda has recently undertaken an Executive Committee level product portfolio review and identified a need to focus innovation activities upon industrial biotechnology as a route to sustainable and biobased ingredients across a broad range of areas. Terpenoids represent one of the largest and most diverse classes of natural products in the world, providing an array of functionalities for different industry sectors ranging from flavour and fragrance to human health and personal care. The Graham laboratory at the University of York is world leading in the discovery and development of different classes of terpenoids from plants and have recently been collaborating with Croda to explore the potential of using these to replace petrochemical derived products in the company's portfolio of ingredients being supplied across a range of industrial sectors. Based on proof of concept work, it is clear there is huge potential. The challenge is that many of these terpene based natural products are not available at commercial scale as they are currently only available in relatively small amounts from the plants that produce them. This project will address this challenge by establishing the biosynthetic route to selected terpenoids that perform in Croda's proprietary platforms and by using a combination of synthetic/engineering biology and industrial biotechnology develop new production platforms that will allow commercial scale-up and development of new biobased products. Croda already have expertise in fermentation based scale-up in so called heterologous host platforms that will complement the gene discovery and laboratory scale engineering of host platforms that will be performed at the University of York. Early leads have already been identified for the Crop Care sector which could have a major impact on the sustainability of agriculture.