Synthetic Biology

A key application of synthetic biology is the design of new metabolic pathways in microbial expression systems towards innovative products, such as biofuels and new chemical building blocks. These modern bioprocesses utilize renewable feedstocks as substrates and are creating a novel sustainable industry, which is known as bioeconomy.

BioLector technology can be applied in this field in order to study the physiological behavior of synthetic bugs. By changing the metabolic pathways, the growth behavior and acidification of the microorganism can also be affected. Therefore, it has to be studied in detail before designing a new bioprocess. The microbioreactor technology processes all of these new bugs under different fermentation or media conditions in a high-throughput manner, with online monitoring.

The producers generated can easily be characterized and compared by specific growth rates, acidification rates, oxygen consumption, or by product formation rates. In addition, by using fluorescent proteins (e.g. GFP) as reporters, the BioLector is frequently used for the basic characterization of new promotors or even whole libraries of synthetic promotors.

The BioLector is an essential tool in the field of synthetic biology, reducing time, efforts, and costs in basic research and applied sciences.

 

Application Example

Screening of promotor libraries

Source: DTU Denmark