Up to $5.2 million in DARPA funds will enable WashU to develop new biomanufacturing capabilities
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are working on giving biomanufacturers a competitive edge by solving the challenge of continuous fermentation
The process of biomanufacturing requires engineering microbes to produce useful chemicals and materials from carbon neutral processes. But current biomanufacturing cannot get beyond small production scale unless it can outcompete big oil.
The petrochemical industry produces chemicals and material building blocks at a low cost because these processes can run nonstop. However, performing microbial biomanufacturing continuously faces numerous challenges and presents a significant hurdle for economically viable bioproduction.
At the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, researchers are working on giving biomanufacturers a competitive edge by solving the challenge of setting up continuous fermentation.
Fuzhong Zhang, the Francis F. Ahmann Professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, will lead an interdisciplinary team to develop a genetic “switch” to make microbes work at high efficiency over extended periods during bioproduction.
The team, which includes biological engineers from WashU (professors Joshua Yuan, Yinjie Tang and Marcus Foston), University of California Riverside, and Texas A&M University, has been awarded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) via the Switch program up to $5.2 million to tackle problems in continuous fermentation.
Biomanufacturing works much like beer brewing, which is in fact the oldest form of biomanufacturing. Along with breweries, the supplement industry makes use of these processes to produce chemicals like omega 3 fatty acids available at the pharmacy. Those industries grow microbes, such as microalgae, fungi or bacteria, in bioreactors, (large enclosed tanks) to produce the chemical in batches, just like we use the byproducts of yeast to make beer.
This batch system is used throughout different industries to make products but is much less efficient than continuous fermentation, where microbes are fed and allowed to operate for weeks or even months at a time
But continuous fermentation often leads to mutation or even an inexplicable worker strike where the microbes stop making the sought-after chemical despite the same conditions.
The work of Zhang’s team will be to develop a switchable system to keep the microbes on task.
“Microbes were evolved to duplicate themselves, not to make any product for us,” said Zhang, who also is co-director of McKelvey’s Synthetic Biology Manufacturing of Advanced Materials Research Center (SMARC). “Once we force them to make a product, we’re working against evolution.”
Many fermentation factors can make biomanufacturing unstable. After addressing one unstable factor, another workaround often pops up elsewhere, like a game of whack-a-mole.
Instead of chasing all the chaotic reactions of the microbes, Zhang and colleagues will develop tools to make evolution work for them.
“The switch system will address problems in long-term continuous fermentation, making biomanufacturing more efficient and cheaper, to the benefit of everyone,” said Zhang.
