Biological Production Systems 2014

Research Project, 2015 – 2021

There is an increasing demand for developing sustainable production of chemicals used in our daily life. Biotechnology offers the possibility to use renewable feedstocks for production of chemicals. Through engineering the metabolism of cell factories it is possible to develop novel biocatalysts by metabolic engineering, and these can be used to produce value-added chemicals that replace traditional production based on extraction from plants or from fossil fuels. The objective of this project is to develop novel yeast cell factories through metabolic engineering for cost-competitive production of cocoa butter, jojoba oil and fatty alcohols. Cost competitive production will require high rates and yields, but as all products considered in this project are derived from fatty acids it will be possible to use a common cell factory platform that has a highly efficient conversion of sugars to fatty acids. We will establish such a platform cell factory using forward engineering, mutagenesis, microfluidic screening, genome-sequencing and systems biology. As part of the project we will also evaluate the use of microalgae as a cell factory for production of fatty alcohols. The value added products considered are widely used in the food and cosmetics industry and face increasing supply problems, and through establishment of fermentation-based production it will be possible to produce these products in large volumes using sustainable feedstocks such as biomass.