Membrane engineering for butanol tolerance

The global economy has an unsustainable dependence on fossil raw material and concerns about environmental sustainability are becoming more acute. Biotechnological processes using microorganisms as cell factories to produce valuable compounds from renewable biomass are an attractive alternative, and an increasing number of platform and high-value chemicals are being produced at industrial scale using this strategy. However, many microbial processes are not implemented at industrial level because the product yield is poorer and more expensive than achieved by chemical synthesis.
It is well-established that microbes show stress responses during butanol bioprocessing and one reason for poor product output from cell factories is production conditions that are ultimately toxic to the cells, often at the level of the cell membrane. This project seeks to understand the lipidomic and proteomic changes that occur in the cell membrane of industrial Clostridial strains when producing butanol. We will then use CRISPR-based technology to make mutants in various membrane biogenesis genes to tune the cell membrane towards butanol tolerance. Strains will be characterised for 'omic changes and butanol production and tolerance. The ultimate aim is to make strains that are higher producing and more tolerant of butanol in an industrial setting.