Team:Amsterdam

    
        
        
        
        
        
			

				

                
                    

                    
                    
[Photo]Synthetic Bromance
					
 Engineering microbial relationships for sustainable bioproduction
					
                    
				
			

        
        
        
 
				

                    

                    
The Problem
					
 The quest for sustainability
                    
                    
                    

					

						

                    

								
								

                                                Our economy still depends largely on fossil resources. For decades, this has fueled the incredible progress of our world, but not without the massive cost of geopolitical instability and global warming - costs we’re now facing more than ever. With the current consequences of climate change visible around the world and global energy demands that are expected to double in 2050, the quest for clean, renewable energy is one of mankind’s most important modern challenges.
                                
                        
                         

									
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Our solution

Combining the best of cyanobacterial sustainability and chemotroph productivity

Synthetic Consortium

the idea is simple: we engineer cyanobacteria to produce simple carbon compounds using CO2 and sunlight in ways that are genetically stable. These molecules are shared with a chemotroph like E. coli, which uses them to produce a desired end-product, like commodity chemicals, pharmaceuticals, or biofuels.

The Goal

In our proof-of-principle consortium, E. coli produces isobutanol (an important biofuel) to highlight its sustainable production potential. But our engineered Synechocystis strains are essentially fully modular cyanobacterial production engines, and can be coupled to any biotechnological production process to remove dependencies on crops or petrochemicals and make it truly sustainable.

Results

How far did we get?

Synechocystis

We engineered various carbon producing pathways in Synechocystis and showed that the accumulation and sharing of carbon compounds can be used by E.coli to grow and make product. Moreover, we demonstrated the importance of genetic stability through evolutionary growth experiments that showed loss of productivity for strains with novel gene insertions and high fitness cost.

e. coli

We designed and implemented a genetic safety switch based on E. coli sharing essential nutrients with an auxotrophic Synechocystis strain. We also built on [insert team] previous efforts and used their biobrick to engineer and demonstrate constitutive iso-1-butanol production of E. coli in co-culture, showing that our consortium can be effectively used for the sustainable production of biofuels.

Dry Lab

Besides using simulations to guide our consortium design, we created software tools that can be used to design new synthetic consortia: Sustainstability™ allows users to identify carbon compounds that can be engineered in a growth-coupled (stable) way, while Auxotrophy Sniper™ identifies auxotrophies that can be engineered to increase bio-safety. Both of these tools are freely available here.

Consortia

We tested our proof-of-princple consortium using the carbon-sharing Synechocystis and bio-fuel producing E. coli and demonstrated mutual growth and product formation. We also developed a micro-droplet screening tool and demonstrated its effectiveness in identifying stable consortia consisting of carbon-sharing cyanobacteria and various chemotrops with biotechnological relevance.

The Team

Six students, trillions of microbes, one purpose

Students

With a combined IQ that is manyfold larger than the sum of its parts, this lean mean student machine has willingly exhanged what could have been a summer of freedom and good weather for the most challenging scientific endeavor of their lives (in what is arguably the most rainy country in the known universe).

• Meet us

Supervisors/Advisors

As in any learning process, working with mentors with laser eyes capable of piercing through a hazy cloud of results to distinguish the signal from the noise can mean the difference between succes and failure. Although our mentors could not shoot lasers out of their eyes, their guidance and advice along the way was invaluable.

• Meet them

Human practices

Applications and implications

Synenergene

Synenergene is an organisation dedicated to fostering responsible research and innovation practices in synthetic biology. They selected a small group of iGEM teams from around the world to collaborate with, which included us. Our human practices efforts therefore revolved around our project with Synenergene.

Application Scenarios

With the help of experts, we wrote several application scenarios in which we conducted detailed investigations into potential real-world applications and their broader implications. These scenarios included companies and business plans that leverage the technology of synthetic consortia to create economic value.

Techno-moral Vignette

Implementing synthetic biology to produce the things we need in a sustainable way sounds great, but comes with a unique set of repercussions. In a fictional newspaper from the year 2023, we explore potential reactions and consequences - both positive and negative - of the large-scale implementation of synthetic consortia in industrial biotech.

Sorry, this page is under construction!

Very recently, there’s been a small shift in the world of synthetic biology. Rather than focus on single organisms - the modus operandi of the biotech industry - researchers are starting to recognize that synthetic ecosystems, consortia of multiple bacterial species, can be used for higher yields, robustness and more diverse purposes. Our goal is to tap into this potential by creating a self-sustaining bio-factory of cyanobacteria - little fellows that need only CO₂ and light - and product-producing E. coli, the general workhorse of the synthetic biology world.

In short: the cyanobacteria will create sugars from CO₂ and sunlight, which it will release and feed to E. coli as a result of our applied synthetic genetic circuits. E. coli will then be engineered to use these sugars to create a product. In our proof-of-concept bio-factory, this product will be fuel. This platform, however, can be expanded to produce any product E. coli can fabricate - medicine, plastics, commodity chemicals - as long as it is fueled by the cyanobacteria that only needs light and CO₂.