Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the selection of eight projects totaling over $5 million. Accordingly, these projects will conduct research and development needed to accelerate the U.S. biomanufacturing sector.
Read more of our news content, here; Pumped hydro storage plant project receives FERC preliminary permit
In fact, these projects are part of the Agile BioFoundry (ABF) consortium, and will leverage National Laboratory capabilities to address challenges in biomanufacturing.
DOE on selecting projects to advance biomanufacturing
Accordingly, DOE selected the C16 Biosciences project, New York, NY, which will work with Pacific Northwest and Sandia National Laboratories. Thus, they will jointly engineer fatty acid synthesis in Rhodosporidium toruloides; particularly, to produce sustainable replacements for palm oil.
Also, Clemson University will be in charge of another project, which will address common challenges in the reliability of industrial yeast fermentation.
Similarly, another project is LanzaTech, of Skokie, IL, that will advance the field of synthetic biology; specifically, by building solutions to more efficiently and quickly engineer production hosts at a reduced cost.
White Dog Labs of New Castle, DE, will also elucidate the specific changes microbes undergo during the continuous, cell-retention process; mainly, by using the isopropanol-producing strain, Clostridium ljungdahlii, as a model system.
More selected projects
Additionally, Kalion, Inc, of Milton, MA, will use machine learning and artificial intelligence to lower growth media production costs. Besides, to increase productivity and increase the overall commercial feasibility of biomanufacturing.
Another project will use ABF’s Learn tools and systems’ biology capabilities to produce tunable combinations of polyhydroxyalkanoates with different chain lengths; thus, enabling new biodegradable plastics with novel properties. Danimer Scientific of Bainbridge, GA, will develop this project.
Lastly, Invaio of Cambridge, MA, will develop an efficient bioprocess for the industrial production of an antimicrobial peptide; which indeed could prove revolutionary for agriculture and add to ABF’s core capabilities.
Finally, Enduro Genetics, Inc, of Copenhagen, Denmark, will use its “product addiction” technology in industrial host organisms; specifically, to demonstrate its ability to improve product titer, rate, and yield agnostically.
