SynBio Routes to Next Generation Green Bio-Surfactants from Sustainable Feedstocks (summary to follow)

In light of major concerns over climate change and oil use, there is a strong drive for industry to reduce its overall environmental footprint through the development of green and sustainable manufacturing practices. In this project, we aim to develop sustainable biosynthetic routes and engineered cell factories for the conversion of unsaturated fatty acid feedstocks to furan-containing fatty acids, an important class of natural products that have great potential to serve as next generation bio-derived surfactants with interesting functional properties.

The project is firmly embedded at the interface of chemistry and biology, a key driver for the BBSRC in the 'Exploiting new ways of working' agenda. It draws on key bioscience skills, including protein engineering, directed evolution and enzyme characterization, and specifically exploits a multi-disciplinary approach to the sustainable production of high-value molecules, which is a major objective in the industrial biotechnology sector.