ERA-NET: In vivo cascades for sustainable access to monomers of high volume polymers

Polymers have become increasingly important to our every day lives and contribute significantly to value generation in our economies, with examples of application of polymers ranging from high end applications in cars, planes, or medical equipment to items of daily use. Polymers have a vast application spectrum and are needed on multiple mega ton scales. Polymer building blocks have a some critical environmental issues connected to their production processes, such as generation of nitrous oxide waste and large amounts of salts and high energy consumption. Thus, there is a pressing demand for the development of eco-efficient and sustainable alternative production routes for such compounds. Our project has addressed these challenges by developing a platform organism for the production of precursors for the high end polymer nylon 6 and other polymers. Our approach is based on enzymes derived from a novel bacterial strain. Our project has developed a solvent tolerant, biofilm forming strain of Pseudomonas that inhibits vaunted properties of a platform organism for the synthesis of various polymer building blocks starting from cyclohexane. During the project, we constructed a high-quality genome-scale metabolic model for this pseudomonas strain. Our German collaboration partners have conducted experiments and genetically modified the organism, and our results show that the final strain is capable of producing the targeted polymer building blocks in large amounts from cyclohexane. During this project, we have also explored different process designs to achieve high-volume production. Additionally, our project partners have analyzed the total energy cost for the whole production process.

Dette prosjektet har vært i stand til å etablere Pseudomonas taiwanensis VLB120 som en organisme med evne til å produsere store mengder av ønskede nylon-precursors fra sykloheksan. I dette prosjektet har det også vært stort fokus på bioprosessdesign, og utvikling av effektive bioreaktorer. Resultatene viser at vi har vært i stand til å gjennomføre målsetningen med å generere en platform organisme som er i stand til å produsere ønskede molekyler i store mengder.

Polymers have become increasingly important to our every day lives and contribute significantly to value generation in our economies, with examples of application of polymers ranging from high end applications in cars, planes, or medical equipment to items of daily use. Polymers have a vast application spectrum and are needed on multiple mega ton scales. Polymer building blocks like adipic acid or e-caprolactam have a couple of critical environmental issues connected to their production processes, such as generation of nitrous oxide waste and large amounts of salts and high energy consumption. Thus, there is a pressing demand for the development of ecoefficient and sustainable alternative production routes for such compounds. Nonetheless, all "bio"-inspired routes are commonly tailored for one single compound; a hurdle biotechnological developments very often feature. Our project faces the challenge of developing a platform organism for the production of precursors for the high end polymer nylon 6 and other polymers. This task is based on enzymes derived from a novel strain which was isolated based on its capability to mineralize cycloalkanes (C5-C8) using these as sole sources of carbon and energy. Taking advantage of the highly active cyclohexane degrading enzymes of the respective degradation pathway this research program will develop a solvent tolerant, biofilm forming Pseudomonas strain towards a true platform organism for the synthesis of various polymer building blocks starting from cyclohexane. This concept will combine heterologous and native genes. Key products will be e-caprolactone, 6-aminohexanoic acid, and adipic acid. Looking at the complete process development chain in terms of biocatalyst understanding and design, reaction and reactor engineering in an integrating and iterative manner, focusing on one host for multiple products, and accompanying this work with an eco-efficiency balance represent the key-characteristics of this work program.