Science on the Screen is the Biology Department new Online Seminars Cycle in which invited scientists will talk about science and their research in about 30 minutes. The second season will run every two weeks, on Mondays.
Science on the Screen is the Biology Department new Online Seminars Cycle in which invited scientists will talk about science and their research in about 30 minutes. The second season will run every two weeks, on Mondays.
Current environmental concerns have driven the development of biorefineries for platform chemicals production, acting as alternatives to the chemical synthesis from petrochemical derivatives. Organic acids display great applicability in the polymer, food, agricultural and pharmaceutical sectors. Fermentation-derived carboxylic acids, e.g. succinic, lactic, and citric acid, are already commercially available however, the current portfolio is quite limited. One of the major bottlenecks for efficient and cost-effective bioproduction is molecule export through the microbial plasma membrane. In recent years, transporter engineering has been the focus of several studies, but the optimization of cell membrane transporters for industrial organic acid production is still at an early stage. This is due to the fact that the functional and structural characterization of membrane proteins is a cumbersome process. In our group, we tackle such challenges by uncovering novel plasma membrane transporter proteins to enhance the tolerance to carboxylic acids, increase production yields, and facilitate downstream processing. Transporter engineering strategies are focused on the improvement of transporter specificity, kinetics, and stability, to ultimately develop robust microbial cell factories for organic acid bioproduction.
10 May | 12:00 | videoconflink
