Towards Biotechnology 2.0: synthetic biology of bioactive molecules

Our ability to readily sequence complete genomes and to manipulate/re-design them on a large scale enables the design and construction of organisms with new functionalities of unprecedented scope (“synthetic biology”). We explore these possibilities in the context of bioactive molecule production. Many microorganisms already have the machinery to produce diverse bioactive molecules. As a first step towards re-engineering bioactive molecule biosynthesis for enhanced productivity and diversity, we aim to understand the possibility of catalytic parts exchange. In addition, we are expanding our collection of computational tools for the detection and analysis of secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene clusters, to enrich our library of parts and building blocks for pathway engineering. Furthermore, we are using computational modelling (constraint-based descriptions of bacterial metabolism) to identify suitable overproduction hosts and pinpoint biosynthetic bottlenecks to target for further cellular engineering in a synthetic biology strategy.