The growing field of bio-refining relies upon the use of microorganisms to convert renewable carbon sources such as sugar into higher value products. Traditional bio-refining processes have taken advantage of the unique abilities of specific micro-organisms to produce desired product, or the genetic engineering of micro-organisms to produce non-natural products. Bio-processes have then been designed around these organisms. These bioprocesses are often very costly in large part due to the complex requirements of the microorganisms themselves, which can necessitate expensive growth conditions as well as separations and processing steps both before and after the micro-organisms' conversion step. OPX has developed several new high-resolution and comprehensive genomics tools that can be used to optimize industrial organisms. We have employed these generalizable methods to very rapidly construct and optimize commercially relevant microorganisms. We are able to optimize micro-organisms that enable both variable and capital cost savings across the entire bioprocess.
In particular, OPX has been able to construct and optimize micro-organisms for the production for several bioprocesses including the biorefining of 3-hydroxypropionic acid. 3-hydroxypropionic acid is a bio-product with several market applications. The most notable being the $7 Billion acrylic acid market, as 3-hydroxypropionic acid is readily converted by conventional methodologies to acrylic acid. Our platform technology has enabled the construction of microbial strains capable of producing commercially relevant titers of 3-hydroxypropionic acid at commercial productivities in inexpensive growth conditions, a strain that will enable a cost competitive bio-processing route to acrylic acid.