Environmental enrichment culture as a route to the biosynthesis of platform chemicals for the plastics industry

据估计，全球丙烯酸市场每年约为60-80亿美元。目前，丙烯酸塑料工业的大部分前体材料来自不可持续的化石燃料。通过开发微生物的生物合成潜力，从可持续的原料中生产这些材料正受到极大的关注。值得注意的是，丙烯酸类塑料的许多应用不能用生物塑料替代。这方面的一个例子是在安全性、强度和耐用性至关重要的飞机窗户上使用丙烯酸。目前，全球每年使用的400万吨甲基丙烯酸酯(ME)中，大约有三分之一是由Lucite国际有限公司生产的。Lucite已经建立了一条在微生物中生产甲基丙烯酸酯的生物合成途径，从而可以提高丙烯酸生产的成本和可持续性。这种合成生物学方法已经导致了ME的成功生产，但需要更多耐ME的生物来改进这一过程。主要原因是ME对最常用的生物技术生物来说是相对有毒的。生物技术底盘生物体的选择通常基于科学熟悉度，而不是生物学可能性。因此，很明显，工业上需要更好的底盘微生物来生产ME，我们建议使用增菌培养方法来鉴定这些微生物及其特定特征，以便为塑料行业可持续的甲基丙烯酸酯生物生产提供支持。这项研究的目的是确定环境中有助于途径改进、寄主菌株耐受性和原料偏好的遗传人才。

The global acrylic acid market is estimated to be $6-8 billion USD per annum. The majority of the precursor materials for the acrylic plastic industry currently come from unsustainable fossil fuels. Significant attention is being aimed at producing these materials from sustainable feedstocks by exploiting the biosynthetic potential of microorganisms. It is important to note that many applications of acrylic plastics cannot be substituted with bioplastics. An example of this is the use of acrylic in aircraft windows where safety, strength and durability are paramount. Lucite International Ltd. currently produce approximately one third of the 4 million tonnes of methacrylate ester (ME) that is used globally each year. Lucite have established a biosynthetic pathway to produce methacrylate ester in microorganisms so that the cost and sustainability of acrylic production can be improved. This synthetic biology approach has led to the successful production of ME, but more ME tolerant organisms are required to improve the process. The predominant reason for this is that ME is relatively toxic to most commonly used biotechnology organisms. Biotechnology chassis organisms are usually selected based upon scientific familiarity, not by biological possibility. For this reason, it is clear that there is an industrial need for better chassis organisms for ME production and we propose to use an enrichment culture approach to identify these organisms and their specific traits for the sustainable bioproduction of methacrylate ester for the plastics industry. The aims of this studentship are to identify genetic talent in the environment that will contribute to pathway improvement, host strain tolerance and feedstock preference.