Methods of Microbial Control in the Clostridial ABE Fermentation Process (MiCON)

Green Biologics is an industrial biotech company, currently re-commercialising the clostridial ABE

fermentation process for the production of n-butanol and acetone from renewable and sustainable

feedstocks. There are many challenges inherent in this commercialisation process, not just with the

complexities of engineering and process design but also with ensuring the clostridial strains used exhibit

robust phenotypes such as resistance to phage infections and ability to out compete microbes

indigenous to the plant environment. This project aims to use an innovative and environmentally

reponsible alternative approach to the ‘easy fix’ solution of using antibiotics by instead taking advantage

of bacteriocins: small peptides produced by a number of bacterial strains to destroy competing

microbes in an environmental space.