Project Title - Metabolic Engineering of Clostridia for Enhanced Solvent Production

Background - With fluctuating oil prices and an increased interest in achieving sustainability in recent years, the production of chemicals from renewable starting materials has attracted widespread attention. Throughout the early 20th century, the chemicals butanol and acetone were produced on an industrial scale using bacteria of the genus Clostridia, but as petrochemical synthesis routes became more and more developed production using Clostridia quickly became economically unfeasible. Historically, Clostridia were not amenable to genetic manipulation and progress in understanding much of their physiology, genetics and biochemistry has been slow. However, there has been a huge increase in the available methodologies for transforming organisms with the development of CRISPR/Cas systems, opening up a wide range of genetic engineering possibilities.
Aims - To generate strains of Clostridium saccharoperbutylacetonicum N1-4 capable of continuous solvent production at high levels. This project will combine a rational engineering approach with in silico modelling of potential genetic manipulation strategies to predict experimental phenotypes, and engineering knock-out and knock-in targets.
Importance - This project will demonstrate the importance of integrated in silico work to complement experimental approaches. In combination with published manipulations, this project will encompass novel strategies to improve solvent production. Improving the yields of solvent will highlight the potential of microbial cell factories to replace traditional petrochemical synthesis.
BBSRC Priority Areas - Industrial biotechnology and bioenergy. This project involves generating compounds from renewables which may function as biofuels. In addition, generated compounds have several uses in industrial chemistry.