Tracking anaerobic microbial community responses using a synthetic biology approach

厌氧消化（AD）通过利用复杂微生物群落的分解代谢活动，支持有机废物的甲烷生物生产。这项技术被大规模用于从废物中回收宝贵资源，如沼气和富氮消化液。沼气可以作为化石燃料的碳中性替代品，而消化物可以作为化肥的低能耗替代品。了解特定的环境、化学和生物参数如何导致特定的微生物组反应，对于更好地理解AD过程背后的微生物生态学至关重要。该项目将使用合成生物学方法生产低成本、定量的原位工具，可以绘制和探索代谢物和毒素浓度的变化，并近乎实时地报告微生物群落的反应。通过在感应途径的控制下将挥发性报告分子的表达引入原生厌氧菌中，我们的目标是产生可以在气相中测量的信号。这项技术将减少与过程监测仪器污染相关的挑战，有可能提供对较低浓度特定分子的响应测量，并可用于操纵微生物对其环境的反应。

Anaerobic digestion (AD) supports the biogenic production of methane from organic waste by utilising the catabolic activities of complex microbial communities. This technology is used at scale to recover precious resources from waste as biogas and nitrogen-rich digestate. Biogas can be used as a carbon neutral drop-in replacement for fossil fuels, while digestate can be used as a low-energy alternative to chemical fertiliser. Understanding how particular environmental, chemical and biological parameters result in specific microbiome responses is important for a better understanding of the microbial ecology that underlies the AD process.This project will use synthetic biology approaches to produce low-cost, quantitative in-situ tools that can chart and explore changes in metabolite and toxin concentrations and report microbial community responses in close to real-time. By introducing the expression of volatile reporter molecules under the control of sensing pathways into indigenous anaerobes we aim to generate signals that can be measured in the gas phase. This technology would reduce the challenges associated with fouling of process monitoring instruments, has the potential to provide measurements in response to lower concentrations of specific molecules and could be useful in manipulating microbial responses to their environment.