Overview

Acronym | Duration | Granted by

NovelBioChem | 01.01.2023 until 31.12.2025 | Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

Motivation and Background

Production strains used in so far established Fermentation methods have disadvantages:

• they need monosaccharides (sugar) as substrate (e.g. from sugar cane or sugar beets)
• they require distinct, mostly expensive nutrition media

Those production strains are often inflexible and sensitive to inhibiting substances.

In contrast fermentation methods based on waste material require new production strains, which are productive and robust. In the project NovelBioChem these new production organisms shall be isolated from biogas digesters.

There is a vast number of different microorganisms in biogas digesters. In order to select the right strains therefrom it is necessary to develop highly specific methods:

• to screenings if a source contains microorganisms with the targeted enzymes
• to verify if the isolated microorganisms still have the targeted enzymes during enrichment

During the project molecular methods shall be developed which may accelerate the selection process from the source to the isolate significantly.

After the potential new production strains are isolated, quantitative measurements of the DNA concentration could monitor and maybe even control the fermentation process (molecular biological process control).

Goals

Firstly, the project NovelBioChem aims to identify and isolate new production organisms for the fermentative manufacturing of platform chemicals. Secondly, new molecular biological methods shall be developed which can be applied for the targeted isolation of production organisms as well as for the process control during production.

Research Program

WIR! – Change by Innovation in the Region (BMBF-Program “Innovation & Structural Change “)

Waste2Value - Microorganisms change West-Palatinate (W2V)