SynBioCO2 - A synthetic biology platform for biomanufacturing with carbon dioxide

更可持续发展的全球趋势鼓励使用生物质作为可再生原料。生物质现在用于生产能源生物燃料，蛋白质和核酸作为治疗剂，生物催化酶，这些都是其在食品和食品配料制造中的应用。虽然生物质比化石燃料更可持续，但生物质供应有限。认识到这一点，政府计划在2022年发布其生物质战略，以审查英国可持续生物质的数量。在此之前，英国商业、能源和工业战略部（BEIS）于2021年11月发布了《生物质政策声明》，阐述了政府关于生物质优先使用框架的主要原则。这种优先顺序清楚地表明，有限的生物质供应及其物流是制造业面临的主要挑战。我们已经看到过度依赖单一资源（例如，化石燃料）可导致耗尽以及地缘政治因素如何影响资源可获得性（例如，新冠疫苗和乌克兰的天然气战争），两者都推高了基本需求的价格。因此，我们必须通过以下方式扩大我们的原料选择：（1）远离原始生物质，探索废弃生物质;（2）确定可用于生物制造的替代可持续原料。该项目的重点是利用空气中的二氧化碳作为生物制造的替代可持续原料。我们将设计和优化二氧化碳利用微生物，将空气中的二氧化碳转化为聚羟基链烷酸酯，一种生物基和可生物降解的塑料。这项技术的发展将有利于英国生物经济的可持续增长，根据英国生物经济战略，2014年该行业价值2200亿英镑，预计2030年将达到4400亿英镑。它还将使我们能够利用二氧化碳的价值，这是一种非常容易获得但尚未充分开发的资源。

The global trend towards more sustainable development has encouraged the use of biomass as a renewable feedstock. Biomass is now used to produce biofuels for energy, proteins and nucleic acids as therapeutics, enzymes for biocatalysis, and these are on top of its applications in food and food ingredient manufacturing. While biomass is more sustainable than fossil fuel, biomass supply is limited. Recognizing this, the government is planning to publish its Biomass Strategy in 2022 to review the amount of sustainable biomass available to the UK. Prior to this, the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published the Biomass Policy Statement in Nov 2021 to set out the government's key principles for a biomass priority use framework. This prioritization clearly signals limited biomass supply and its logistics as key challenges for manufacturing. We have seen how over-reliance on a single resource (e.g., fossil fuel) can lead to depletion and how geopolitical factors can influence resource accessibility (e.g., COVID vaccines and Ukraine war on gas), both of which push prices up for essential needs. It is thus critical that we broaden our feedstock options by (1) moving away from virgin biomass to explore waste biomass and (2) identifying alternative sustainable feedstock that can be used for biomanufacturing. This project focuses on the use of carbon dioxide in air as an alternative sustainable feedstock in biomanufacturing. We will engineer and optimize a carbon dioxide utilizing microorganism that converts carbon dioxide in air into polyhydroxyalkanoate, a biobased and biodegradable plastic. Development of this technology will benefit the sustainable growth of the UK bioeconomy, a sector worth £220bn in 2014 and expected to reach £440bn in 2030 according to the UK Bioeconomy Strategy. It will also allow us to tap into the value of carbon dioxide, a highly accessible but insufficiently explored resource.