RICEFUEL: Engineering enzymes, bacteria and bioconversion processes for advanced biofuels from waste grain straw

Completed

Renewable Energy Sources(Bio-Energy, Production of transport biofuels (incl. Production from wastes))
Renewable Energy Sources(Bio-Energy, Production of other biomass-derived fuels (incl. Production from wastes))

Basic and strategic applied research

BIOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES (Biological Sciences)

Not Cross-cutting

Prof N Minton
Centre for Biomolecular Sciences
University of Nottingham

Research Grant

BBSRC

01 October 2013

30 September 2016

36 months

£1,393

Transport Systems and Vehicles

East Midlands

Sustainable bioenergy and biofuels (SuBB)

Prof N Minton, Centre for Biomolecular Sciences, University of Nottingham

Prof N Bruce, Biology, University of York
Prof D Fell, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University
Prof H Gilbert, Institute for Cell and Molecular Biosciences (ICaMB), Newcastle University
Prof S McQueen-Mason, Biology, University of York
Dr M Poolman, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University
Dr K Winzer, Centre for Biomolecular Sciences, University of Nottingham
Dr Y Zhang, Centre for Biomolecular Sciences, University of Nottingham

The proposed research programme has the potential to inform novel enzymatic and microbial strategies that improve the conversion of plant biomass into advanced biofuels such as butanol and alkanes. Currently the major economic limitation to the use of lignocellulosic biomass in biofuel production is the cost of the enzymatic treatments used to generate the monosaccharides. By generating novel glycoside hydrolases with improved activities against cell walls, this project may reduce both enzyme inputs into the process, and thus increase its economic viability. Similar to enzyme development, there is also a need to deploy synthetic biology to generate novel production strains capable of fermenting sugars into molecules that have wider utility in the biofuel sector than ethanol. Specifically this project is important to companies that are using plant biomass for industrial fermentations, such as bioethanol production. The importance of this research programme is illustrated by the fact that this project will interact with TMO Renewables, a leading player in the U.K. bioenergy industry. If successful we anticipate that that within the 3 -year programme the enzymes and microbial strains developed will be protected and commercialized, likely through licences with leading enzyme companies and through the development of Consolidated Bioprocessing Systems with TMO Renewables.
Increased employment: The research has the potential to deliver green jobs in the UK and further afield: The development of enzyme systems that contribute to the efficient deconstruction of lignocellulosic biomass will increase the take up of the technology, promoting growth within the clean technology sector. Furthermore the project will assist in addressing the shortage in industry of people able to construct and analyze genome-scale metabolic models from genome sequences.
Benefit to the environment: A primary driver for the move from fossil fuels to fuels and chemicals from waste or renewable sources of lignocellulose, is the production of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. An efficiently operated biorefinery using lignocellulose should be able to deliver an 80 % reduction in GHG emissions compared to its fossil fuel equivalent (based on ethanol production). This project will assist in reaching national and international targets for use of renewables and mitigation of climate change.
International collaboration: In the project there will be extensive collaboration between the Indian and UK partners. During the programme, not only with the groups meet regularly but there are clear pathways to the transfer of both technology and approaches between the two countries. These interactions will be cemented by PDRAs from the UK working in India and vice versa.

Our overall aim is the pilot-scale development of a microbial based process able to convert rice straw-derived sugars into the advanced biofuels butanol and alkanes. This will be accomplished by implementing three workpackages (WPs). WP1 will develop novel enzymes with elevated activity against rice straw. The WP will deploy two strategies. The first strategy will mine rice straw composting microbial communities and insect rice stem borer symbionts for novel enzymes that display elevated activity against rice straw. The mining of the straw composts will use proteomics to identify protein targets, informed by transcriptomic data. The rice straw enzymes from the insect will be identified from genomic and transcriptomic data of microbes that degrade rice straw. The second approach will evaluate the capacity of natural and engineered arabinoxylan degrading enzymes against rice straw. WP2 will develop engineered bacterial strains that produce advanced biofuels (alkanes) from rice straw. In the WP2 In Silico Design will be used to model metabolic engineering strategies to produce alkanes and other biofuels from Clostridium acetobutylicum and Geobacillus. Based on the models, metabolic pathways will be constructed using BioBrick technologies that will be optimized through iterative hypothesis and testing through transcriptome, proteome and metabolome profiling. WP2 will also develop partial consolidated bioprocessing systems based on the Geobacillus strains. In WP3 the enzymes and microbial strains developed in WP1 and WP2, respectively, will be used to develop production systems that ferment pretreated rice straw into sugars, which are then fermented into advanced biofuels by Geobacillus and C. acetobutylicum

14/04/14