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Research Focus: Microbes providing Solutions to Climate Change: Developing a future Carbon Cycle with Synthetic Microbiology

Can we reinvent the biological carbon cycle? This biological carbon cycle is the product of billions of years of evolution. It is dominated by only a handful of CO2- and CH4-converting enzymes. However, these natural solutions are all constrained by their respective architectures and represent only a fraction of the theoretically possible solution space.

Building on the knowledge about the evolution (Research Focus: Microbes as Drivers) and biochemistry (Research Focus: Microbes as Responders) of natural greenhouse gas-converting enzymes, we will use synthetic biology to re-open the biological design space towards new-to-nature reactions and enzymes. Our research wants to go beyond classical metabolic engineering approaches and understand human beings as active part of evolution that can re-initiate and re-open new evolutionary paths with synthetic biology.

Concentrated at the SYNMIKRO Center for Synthetic Microbiology, we will develop new enzymes, biosynthetic pathways and microbial chassis for more efficient CO2/CH4-conversions, providing solutions that Nature has apparently not explored or realized) during evolution. These efforts will enable completely novel (bio)catalytic solutions, including new and enhanced carbon-converting microbes, synthetic enzyme cascades, and prospectively even artificial cells. This research will deliver new problem-solving strategies and serve as innovation driver towards a sustainable carbon cycle 3.0, fostered by microbial solutions, a “microbial neo-carbonocene”.