Until the mid-20th century, farmers struggled to get enough nitrogen for their crops, which limited plant growth. Then, along came the Haber-Bosch process, a groundbreaking invention that allowed us to make ammonia from the air, solving the nitrogen shortage and boosting food production worldwide. However, this innovation also led to a problem: farmers started using too much nitrogen, causing issues in the environment.
In response, this project, NoN2O, aims to develop biotechnology to use nitrogen more efficiently in agriculture and to reduce harmful nitrous oxide (N2O) greenhouse gas emissions. We plan to do this by utilizing waste materials to increase the activity of DNRA bacteria in soils. We will specifically focus on bacteria that in addition to DNRA can consume N2O, so when they are vectored into soils, they will enhance nitrogen retention and reduce the emissions. In simple terms, it is about making farming more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
To tackle the climate and environmental impact of chemical industrial processes, enzymes have emerged as a promising solution capable of radically minimizing the use of harsh chemicals and lowering consumption. Unfortunately, the enzymes available today are rarely directly suitable for these processes. However, fast-growing advanced techniques, such as computational protein design, enable us to improve existing enzymes or even create new ones. What sets EDFuSE apart is its holistic approach considering the enzyme multi-domain structure. Our focus is on the mutual organization and interplay of different domains with polymeric substrates, for optimal performance under industrial conditions. We will delve into the intricate details of enzyme structure and function to convert particularly complex materials and develop a versatile toolbox dedicated to enzyme engineering. EDFuSE represents a significant step toward more sustainable and eco-friendly industrial processes.
Tree bark is a renewable resource produced in huge amounts every year, but it is today of low-value and poorly used. It is today typically burnt, though its high moisture and ash make this inefficient, and the bark’s different structure from regular wood also makes it unsuitable for regular pulping. The bark contains a high proportion of defensive compounds, known as extractives, which are generally toxic and protects the tree against attacks. The idea of this project is to enable biological conversion of the extractives into novel products that can replace fossil alternatives used today. However, there is virtually no existing knowledge on how bark is deconstructed in nature, which prevents such developments. We will generate the necessary knowledge by following bark degradation, and use identified enzymes and microorganisms to valorize bark, its extractives, and help mitigate material losses in industry.
Enzymes can be used to produce many of the things that our society needs with low environmental footprint compared to producing the same thing with conventional chemical methods. UGTs are enzymes that can attach a sugar molecule to a cosmetic ingredient, dye, food ingredient, and other chemicals, thereby increasing the water solubility and stability. However, most UGTs cannot withstand the conditions present in industrial processes, so it becomes very expensive and unsustainable to use them. But nature has a place to look for stable enzymes: the extremophiles. These are organisms living in extreme environments such as geysers, the arctic, the desert, or deep down in the sea. They have evolved to withstand these hard conditions, and so have their enzymes. This project discovers novel, robust enzymes from extremophiles, and uses these to learn something about what control an enzymes robustness. The project will also develop low-impact biosolutions.
Biomethane (biogas) production is a waste-to-energy technology with outstanding climate, environmental and societal benefits. The aim of the present project is to improve the activities of a ubiquitous and important microbial group called ‘syntrophs,’ that work in tight cooperation to form methane in these biotechnology systems. Initially, cultivation, molecular and visualization approaches will be used to address key knowledge gaps within the area. This will enable us to reconstruct metabolic models to predict nutrient requirements and rationally design new culture conditions for these microbes. Thereafter, the outcome will be practically assessed in cultivation systems that mimic the habitat in large-scale facilities. The prospect is to contribute to the development of effective strategies to increase the methane forming capacity of syntrophs and by that improve productivity in biomethane production systems with decisive importance for the transition to a sustainable society.
Microorganisms such as yeast can produce natural chemicals from other other organisms such as plants in a sustainable manner. This involves genetically engineering the yeast to produce the right plant enzymes but does not always work. Microorganisms have different internal environment than plants which may interfere with the enzymes. Here, we engineer a new compartment in the microorganism – a membrane-less organelle. The membrane-less organelles should act as a reaction chamber than isolate the new enzymes from the life processes of the host and vice versa. This organelles should concentrate the right enzymes and their substrates and exclude interfering enzymes. We hypothesize that such structures will accelerate the reaction and reduce formation of by-products and can be used to produce many different chemicals. We will focus on enzymes producing natural colourants as a test case to explore general principles governing enzyme containing membrane-less organelles.