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Project 1: Metabolic engineering of Zymomonas mobilis for higher value commodities
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Co-supervisor: Dr Young Jae Jeon (yjjeon@unsw.edu.au)
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Recent advances in system biology and the newly developed biorefinery concept have led to a particular interest in Zymomonas mobilis as a platform organism. With urgent industry’s claims for the development of a novel biorefinery process for higher value commodities, the favorable biocatalytic characteristics from this bacterium will be employed into such a potential process. Metabolic engineering approaches including enhancing xylose metabolism by identifying the rate-limit enzymes, modifying the ethanologenic pathway by redirecting carbon metabolic flux, and expressing the requisite proteins will be addressed in this project to develop efficient catalysts. This is a research project in collaboration with the international chemical company BASF.
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Evaluation of cellulosic raw materials for bioethanol production using recombinantZymomonas mobilis (2 projects)
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| Supervisors: Professor Peter Rogers, email: p.rogers@unsw.edu.au; Charles Svenson, email: c.svenson@unsw.edu.au |
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The high price of oil, environmental concerns and opportunities for enhanced regional development have stimulated strong government and industry interest in fuel ethanolparticularly from second generation processes based on cellulosic (biomass) raw materials. The projects will involve an evaluation of a number of these potentially commercial rawmaterials via their pre-treatment and fermentation kinetics in controlled fermentors.A recombinant strain of Z.mobilis ZM4(pZB5) capable of fermenting both C5 and C6 sugarswill be used in these evaluations. There is significant commercial interest in these projectswith major infrastructure and research funding from the National Collaborative ResearchInfrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and other State and Federal Government programs.
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