Sustainable Style for Clean Growth: Innovating Textile Production through Engineering Biology
Lead Research Organisation:
Imperial College London
Department Name: Bioengineering
Abstract
This Engineering Biology Mission Award project is an intensive 2-year program designed to use synthetic biology and microbial fermentation to rapidly bring Clean Growth benefits to one the worst-polluting sectors of global industry: fashion. The project brings together a set of expert teams based in Newcastle and London with UK SMEs and start-ups that are transforming the fashion sector via their use of microbially-made products. Our combined research efforts will be put to task on rapidly transforming the biological production of an exciting, innovative and environmentally friendly product that can rapidly be adopted by the fashion sector: microbial leather.
We will develop and optimise a variety of sustainable and efficient biomanufacturing processes for producing a class of microbial leather based on bacterial cellulose, a high-performance biomaterial grown in high yield at low cost from the bacteria found in Kombucha fermentations. Our project is designed to use engineering biology approaches to immediately increase the efficiency of the environmentally friendly manufacturing process of producing this microbial leather. We will work together to engineer bacterial strains and use synthetic biology methods to enable high efficiency use of waste feedstocks, efficient water and nutrient usage, and innovative bio-based treatments for desirable properties, such as colouration, patterns, coatings and additives.
The societal goal of this work is to create sustainable and renewable processes for a circular economy for microbial leather production and end-of-life. The project will contribute to the UK's Net-Zero targets by reducing carbon emissions and petrochemical use in the production of leather alternatives. Notably fashion is a crucial sector for UK economic growth but is entirely dependent on the global textiles industry, an industry that causes up to 10% of global carbon emissions, produces 20% of wastewater and 35% of marine microplastic pollution. This industry is projected to use up to 25% of the global carbon budget by 2050, and as such it is a key target for innovation for clean growth if the world is to meet its sustainability goals. Of all materials used in fashion, leather is particularly problematic, as cattle are the leading driver of deforestation, and chrome tanning creates widespread chemical pollution. No other material comes close for its all-round negative impact, and current plastics-based leather alternatives require incineration or landfill at their end of life, and so are not the desired alternative.
For microbial leather to emerge as the ideal replacement to the world's use of bovine leather, we need to address 4 main technical challenges:
1: Reducing the need for using expensive sugar in the growth of bacterial cellulose
2: Removing the need to have separate processes for dyeing and patterning a material
3: Removing reliance on petrochemical-derived additives and toxic crosslinking methods
4: Improving durability but be able to still ensure natural degradation at end-of-life
We aim to address these challenges by leveraging engineered biology for efficient material fabrication and controllable modification in a minimal number of steps. We will do this by engineering enzymes, microbes and microbial communities (E. coli, yeast, bacillus and Komagataeibacter) doing so in collaboration with the ideal set of UK industry partners; Colorifix, Modern Synthesis and Brewlab, With their help we will conduct pilot-scale production runs and process tests, and to ensure impact and a future beyond this award we will also engage with wider stakeholders, such as target industrial consumers, fashion designers and sustainability analysts that can help us determine the ideal route-to-market. In doing this project we will accelerate the UK's leadership in clean growth in fashion by helping replace leather with a low-impact, highly desirable microbially-made alternative.
We will develop and optimise a variety of sustainable and efficient biomanufacturing processes for producing a class of microbial leather based on bacterial cellulose, a high-performance biomaterial grown in high yield at low cost from the bacteria found in Kombucha fermentations. Our project is designed to use engineering biology approaches to immediately increase the efficiency of the environmentally friendly manufacturing process of producing this microbial leather. We will work together to engineer bacterial strains and use synthetic biology methods to enable high efficiency use of waste feedstocks, efficient water and nutrient usage, and innovative bio-based treatments for desirable properties, such as colouration, patterns, coatings and additives.
The societal goal of this work is to create sustainable and renewable processes for a circular economy for microbial leather production and end-of-life. The project will contribute to the UK's Net-Zero targets by reducing carbon emissions and petrochemical use in the production of leather alternatives. Notably fashion is a crucial sector for UK economic growth but is entirely dependent on the global textiles industry, an industry that causes up to 10% of global carbon emissions, produces 20% of wastewater and 35% of marine microplastic pollution. This industry is projected to use up to 25% of the global carbon budget by 2050, and as such it is a key target for innovation for clean growth if the world is to meet its sustainability goals. Of all materials used in fashion, leather is particularly problematic, as cattle are the leading driver of deforestation, and chrome tanning creates widespread chemical pollution. No other material comes close for its all-round negative impact, and current plastics-based leather alternatives require incineration or landfill at their end of life, and so are not the desired alternative.
For microbial leather to emerge as the ideal replacement to the world's use of bovine leather, we need to address 4 main technical challenges:
1: Reducing the need for using expensive sugar in the growth of bacterial cellulose
2: Removing the need to have separate processes for dyeing and patterning a material
3: Removing reliance on petrochemical-derived additives and toxic crosslinking methods
4: Improving durability but be able to still ensure natural degradation at end-of-life
We aim to address these challenges by leveraging engineered biology for efficient material fabrication and controllable modification in a minimal number of steps. We will do this by engineering enzymes, microbes and microbial communities (E. coli, yeast, bacillus and Komagataeibacter) doing so in collaboration with the ideal set of UK industry partners; Colorifix, Modern Synthesis and Brewlab, With their help we will conduct pilot-scale production runs and process tests, and to ensure impact and a future beyond this award we will also engage with wider stakeholders, such as target industrial consumers, fashion designers and sustainability analysts that can help us determine the ideal route-to-market. In doing this project we will accelerate the UK's leadership in clean growth in fashion by helping replace leather with a low-impact, highly desirable microbially-made alternative.
Technical Summary
Recently Engineered Living Materials (ELMs) is an emerging new research area where synthetic biology is used to make new materials that benefit from the technologies of living cells. By reprogramming cells like E. coli, cellulose-producing bacteria and protein-secreting yeasts, we've shown that novel materials with advanced functionalities and properties can be efficiently grown at scale. Here, using our expertise in synthetic biology and bacterial cellulose (BC) ELMs, we will use engineering biology to transform the production of BC leather, an exciting new alternative leather that the fashion industry is keen to adopt to replace bovine leather, a major driver of global carbon emissions and water pollution.
To help fashion achieve Clean Growth, this Mission Award will take a multipronged approach in using engineering biology to improve all key steps of growing BC and turning it into fabric that outcompetes other leathers in functionality, feel and green credentials. We will engineer enzymes and transporter proteins, expressing these in our cells to enable BC-producing bacteria and co-cultures to grow high quality material on waste from UK industries. We will engineer and optimise E. coli and yeasts with metabolic pathways that make pigments and establish co-cultures of these with our BC-producing cells, so that the BC leather they make is coloured and patterned during growth to avoid resource-intensive separate dyeing steps. We will test other microbially-made biopolymers (gums, bioplastics) as additives to BC that give it a leather feel, and then engineer co-cultures so that these additives and BC grow together, rather than need adding-in as a separate step. We will make and secrete from microbes novel fusion proteins that crosslink and coat the BC leather, which enhance durability yet can be snap-degraded at end-of-life. This and more will be done via collaboration between our institutes and our exciting UK partners: Colorifix, Modern Synthesis and Brewlab.
To help fashion achieve Clean Growth, this Mission Award will take a multipronged approach in using engineering biology to improve all key steps of growing BC and turning it into fabric that outcompetes other leathers in functionality, feel and green credentials. We will engineer enzymes and transporter proteins, expressing these in our cells to enable BC-producing bacteria and co-cultures to grow high quality material on waste from UK industries. We will engineer and optimise E. coli and yeasts with metabolic pathways that make pigments and establish co-cultures of these with our BC-producing cells, so that the BC leather they make is coloured and patterned during growth to avoid resource-intensive separate dyeing steps. We will test other microbially-made biopolymers (gums, bioplastics) as additives to BC that give it a leather feel, and then engineer co-cultures so that these additives and BC grow together, rather than need adding-in as a separate step. We will make and secrete from microbes novel fusion proteins that crosslink and coat the BC leather, which enhance durability yet can be snap-degraded at end-of-life. This and more will be done via collaboration between our institutes and our exciting UK partners: Colorifix, Modern Synthesis and Brewlab.
