Difference between revisions of "Team:British Columbia/Project/Consortia"

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                     <p> This year, our team aims to make processing and utilization of renewable biomass feedstocks cheaper and more efficient. For this, we decided to design a microbial consortia to separated metabolic processes between two members - <i>Caulobacter</i>  and <i>E.coli</i>. As microbial consortia consisting of these two bacteria has never been described before, we needed to detrmine conditions in which this bacteria are able grow together. Next we need to track dynamics of each member to ensure that one bacteria will not over-compete another. And last, as we defined the growth condition, we could start co-culturing <i>Caulobacter</i> displaying cellulases with <i>E.coli</i> producing β-carotene to confirm that our consortia can be efficient for direct transformation of lignocellulosic biomass in useful products.
 
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<li> Successfully grew <i>Caulobacter</i> and <i>E.coli</i> in M2 minimal media supplemented with 0.2% glucose.</li>
 
<li> Successfully grew <i>Caulobacter</i> and <i>E.coli</i> in M2 minimal media supplemented with 0.2% glucose.</li>
 
<li> Co-cultured <i>Caulobacter</i> and <i>E.coli</i> to determine the community dynamics.</li>
 
<li> Co-cultured <i>Caulobacter</i> and <i>E.coli</i> to determine the community dynamics.</li>
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<li> Co-cultured cellulase-displaying <i>Caulobacter</i> with β-carotene producing to demonstrate a functional proof of concept of Crescentium project.</i></p>
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<li> Co-cultured cellulase-displaying <i>Caulobacter</i> with β-carotene producing <i>E.coli</i> to demonstrate a functional proof of concept of Crescentium project.</i></p>
  
 
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Revision as of 00:12, 19 October 2016

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Consortia

Consortia

Abstract

This year, our team aims to make processing and utilization of renewable biomass feedstocks cheaper and more efficient. For this, we decided to design a microbial consortia to separated metabolic processes between two members - Caulobacter and E.coli. As microbial consortia consisting of these two bacteria has never been described before, we needed to detrmine conditions in which this bacteria are able grow together. Next we need to track dynamics of each member to ensure that one bacteria will not over-compete another. And last, as we defined the growth condition, we could start co-culturing Caulobacter displaying cellulases with E.coli producing β-carotene to confirm that our consortia can be efficient for direct transformation of lignocellulosic biomass in useful products.

Key Achievements

  • Successfully grew Caulobacter and E.coli in M2 minimal media supplemented with 0.2% glucose.
  • Co-cultured Caulobacter and E.coli to determine the community dynamics.
  • Co-cultured cellulase-displaying Caulobacter with β-carotene producing E.coli to demonstrate a functional proof of concept of Crescentium project.

    • Introduction

    Microorganisms live in complex microbial communities in the wild, in which individual species with specialized phenotypes interact and cooperate with each other to perform complex metabolic functions. Following nature's examples, there is an increasing trend in using microbial communities for biotechnological application due to their robustness and the ability to perform complex metabolic tasks through the division of labor. Construction of synthetic microbial communities allows to compartmentalize and optimize metabolic functions in different hosts. The goal of our project is to design a stable, robust microbial community for the production of valuable compounds from lignocellulosic biomass. The metabolic processes are split between biomass-degrading bacteria and the production bacteria, which transforms the degradation products into valuable products. For the first part, we engineered Caulobacter displaying functional biomass-transforming enzymes that act on cellulose. For the second part, we engineered E.coli producing β-carotene as a proof of concept. Now we need to confirm that these two bacteria can be co-cultured together to generate a stable consortia for consolidated bioprocessing.

    Check out other parts of our project below!