Team:Bielefeld-CeBiTec

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Welcome to our project

Our project

Ecological power management is currently facing three challenges: the storage of electrical power, the development of renewable energy resources, which are not timely and locally synced with demand, and the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide due to the use of fossil fuels. We address these challenges by implementing a proof of concept production of the biofuel isobutanol from carbon dioxide. In our project, a bacterial microcompartment from cyanobacteria, the carboxysome, was deployed in Escherichia. coli for carbon dioxide fixation under aerobic conditions. We further engineered E. coli to derive the energy for this process from electricity by implementing electron-mediator uptake and recycling. This ‘electricity’ pathway comprised proteins such as the furmarate reductase. Feasibility was analyzed in a self-constructed bioreactor. Ultimately, we established an isobutanol production pathway by heterologous expression of five genes from E. coli, Bacillus subtilis and Lactococcus lactis.


Achievements

Design and construction of a rMFC
Design and construction of a flow cell reactor
Construction of an electrophilic E.coli strain
Successful isobutanol production
Construction of a functional microcompartment, the carboxysome
Genome integration of OprF
Functional in-vitro assay of RuBisCo
Development of an antibiotic-free selection system
Several human practice projects
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