Speaker
Description
We are still actively searching for principles and recipes to design scalable, robust, efficient, and modular microbial bioproduction processes. Engineering natural microbes, however, also means balancing between the interests of the microbe, hardwired in natural biochemistry, and the biotechnologist who aims to upcycle poorly accessible, abundant feedstocks. Could we unlock alternative feedstocks for synthetic biotechnology by rational engineering of microbial communities? I argue that we should seek inspiration from metabolism(s) from natural environments, and codify their physiology, as we did with “cellular economics” of single microbes in isolation. For this we propose to blend multiple meta-omics data with mechanistic, stoichiometric modeling of metabolic networks. We are continuously developing a library of metabolic “jigsaw parts” by reconstructing metabolic networks from metagenome-assembled genomes of environmental microcosms. In parallel, we use metatranscriptomics data generated from the same samples to identify mutually compatible jigsaw parts, i.e. metabolic networks which are co-expressed in multiple microorganisms forming natural microbial communities. In the long run, we aim to design a “rulebook” of synthetic metabolic networks, based on the insights of our current data-driven approach.
