Optimizing metabolic functions in microbial production using synchronized populations

现在有可能利用微生物过程生产分子，其方式和数量直到最近才被认为是不可能的。在能源、制药和生物材料等领域，不断开发和改进新的战略，以创造增值产品。虽然许多这些进展在实验室中很有希望，但将它们转化为经济上可行的工艺往往是一个挑战。因此，整合遗传工具和生物过程的发展日益重要。限制生物生产优化的另一个重要因素是群体中的细胞表现出各种不同的行为。

It is now possible to use microbial processes to produce molecules in ways and quantities that were, until recently thought to be impossible. Novel strategies are constantly developed and improved to create value-added products in fields as varied as energy, pharmaceuticals and biomaterials. While many of these advances are promising in the laboratory, it is often a challenge to transfer them into economically viable processes. It is thus increasingly relevant to integrate the development of genetic tools and bioprocesses. Another important factor limiting the optimization of bio-production is the fact that cells in a population display a wide variety of different behaviors. Some of my recent work has shown that E. coli populations synchronized using self-cycling cultivation - a non-intrusive, process-based approach to obtaining cell populations with a narrow age distribution - displayed increased productivity of growth-associated products (phages and recombinant proteins). The synchronization process could thus lead to a beneficial reassignment of metabolic functions. The proposed research program aims to identify the metabolic factors affecting this increase in productivity in synchronized E. coli populations. From these results, efforts will be made to develop genetic tools and bioprocessing strategies to improve productivity in engineered pathways with synchronized microbial populations. It will thus be possible to treat whole microbial populations as if it were a single cell. This will allow tighter control of processes and higher yields of bio-products in a wide array of industries. Another objective of the program will be to train students in an interdisciplinary field combining process engineering, microbiology, molecular biology and metabolic engineering.