BioMADE Webinar Series — Enabling Commodity Chemical Production with Non Canonical Microbe-Feedstock Combinations

Biomanufacturing will not become competitive with petroleum at scale if it continues to heavily rely on organisms that can only leverage refined biomasses. To save money, time, and microbial patience, MicroByre addresses the chemically capable bacteria that don't eat sugar but have not been adopted into industrial practice because they are considered genetically intractable. When you are not limited to sugar, and your microbe has evolved to make the chemical you seek, the range of products you can address with synthetic biology improves dramatically.

As an example, with support from BioMADE's first project call,  MicroByre demonstrated the production of an immediate precursor to an industrial acid, an important platform chemical that to date has no commercial scale biomanufacturing methods. Our bacteria uses dairy industry wastes like acid whey, secretes the target molecule, and needs much less stringent fermentation conditions than E. coli when grown in standard hardware. We are genetically engineering it to reduce byproduct formation and nutritional supplementation requirements. This rugged, specialist bacteria that does not require gourmet meals will make a biomanufacturing route to acrylic acid cost-competitive with the current petroleum process.

This webinar will be taking place Wednesday, Sept. 13, 12:00-1:00pm CT / 10:00-11:00am PT and is open to BioMADE members only.

Watch the recording here.