Engineering Biology

We design and construct microbes and biomolecules to benefit human, animal and planetary health. We are developing new biomedicines, making useful products from wastes and generating sustainable feedstocks that reduce or avoid the need for fossil carbon. We engineer genetic code at levels of single DNA ‘letters’ through to building whole synthetic genomes of diverse organisms best suited to the application.

In organisms such as bacteria, yeasts and microalgae, our researchers are using:

• Combinatorial design to develop performance engineered cells

• Metabolic engineering, bioreactors and fermentations to develop microbes for sustainable biomanufacturing

• Large multi-gene genetic constructs to produce glycoproteins and glycans as prototype biomedicines

• Engineered proteins for industrial and medical applications

• Redesign of entire synthetic chromosomes for specific purposes

• Microalgae for natural product discovery and production

• Conversion of waste gases into single cell protein animal feeds via microbial factories

• Cell-free expression systems for biomedicine manufacturing

• Microbial fuel cells and electrosynthesis

• Advanced synthetic systems to reveal fundamental rules of life

Theme Leads: John Heap, Klaus Winzer and Ying Zhang

SBRC Nottingham

The SBRC is a world-leading centre for Clostridium research and microbial gas-fermentation. It has a multidisciplinary critical mass of around 100 researchers funded by research councils and industry. The SBRC works with a range of microbes capable of recycling carbon into the chemicals and fuels modern society needs in a sustainable manner. These include aerobes and anaerobes, mesophiles and thermophiles, as well as saccharolytic, proteolytic and autotrophic chassis. Synthetic biology approaches using metabolic engineering, proprietary genome engineering tools and systems approaches are being used to optimise each chassis for the conversion of waste gases and biomass into industrially useful fuels and chemicals.

The SBRC is also involved in therapeutic biotechnology including genetically engineer Clostridium botulinum to study its physiology and to engineer safe strains. Allied to this work are studies aimed at the development of countermeasures against Clostridioides difficile infection, including vaccine development, phage therapy and preventing spore germination in the microbiota. Through re-wiring of the clostridial sporulation pathway, a suite of strains are in development that will be used in tumour and microbiome delivery and in large scale, fermentation-based manufacturing processes.

An independent external review of the SBRC facilities stated that they were "the most comprehensive facilities in microbial gas fermentation seen anywhere in the world". The SBRC occupies an entire floor of the Biodiscovery Institute’s research facility and has bespoke robotics platforms, 11 double anaerobic microbiological cabinets, two suites of LC, LC-MS, GC and GC-MS analytics and three suites of microbial gas fermentation facilities enabling parallel fermentation at lab-scale as batch or continuous culture in both aerobic and anaerobic conditions.

Nottingham Engineering Biology Labs (NEBL)

NEBL use a range of genetic and biological techniques to engineer microbes with new useful properties. We develop powerful synthetic biology technologies including massively parallel genetic design and construction, and design or edit DNA from individual DNA bases (‘letters’) all the way up to rewriting whole genomes. We apply these technologies to engineering microbes and their metabolism for applications in biomanufacturing, biocatalysis, sustainability, and health; often using diverse organisms best suited to each challenge, including Clostridium, E. coli, yeast and cyanobacteria.

Research highlights

• John Heap. UKRI; £12.5M; GlycoCell Engineering Biology Mission Hub: Transforming glycan biomanufacture for health

• Ben Blount. BBSRC; £49K; Mining natural and synthetic diversity towards sustainable methacrylate production

• John Heap. UKRI; £14M Carbon-Loop Sustainable Biomanufacturing Hub (C-Loop)

• Ruth Griffin. MRC Impact Accelerator Award; £65K; Preclinical testing of a novel outer membrane vesicle (OMV) vaccine platform directed against Clostridioides difficile

• Katalin Kovacs. EPSRC; £6.5M; Centre for Doctoral Training in Resilient Chemistry: Feedstock to Function (CDT-F2F)

• Ben Blount. Chan Zuckerberg Donor Advised Fund (DAF) through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation; $600K; Unlocking Modular and Combinatorial Chromosome Assembly

• Neil Thomas, UKRI BBSRC; £1.8M. Evaluation and optimisation of new engineered human apoferritins: protein nanocages for targeted drug delivery and intracellular cargo release

• John Heap. BBSRC; £748K; Full Spectrum Cell Sorter for Nottingham and the Midlands

• Ying Zhang. BBSRC Follow-on Fund; £250K; Ectoine production from methanol fermentation

Find out more about SBRC research

Find out more about NEBL research

Our researchers

Search the table below to find out more about our researchers. You are able to filter the table by searching for names, keywords, and techniques.

 

Full list of our researchers

Name	Research keywords	Research techniques
Ben Blount	Synthetic genomics, synthetic biology, microbial strain engineering, genome engineering, yeast genetics	DNA assembly, CRISPR, chromosome design, SCRaMbLE
Daniel Booth	Chromosomes, mitosis, advanced-imaging, cancer, cell-division	CLEM, electron microscopy, advanced proteomics, advanced imaging, light microscopy, volume microscopy
Lee Buttery	3D cell models, stem cells, osteoblasts, cell-materials interactions, tissue engineering	3D and ES cell culture, osteoblast culture, immunocytochemistry, optical tweezers for cell biology
Miguel Camara	Biofilms, quorum sensing, antimicrobials, microbial gene regulation, antimicrobial target discovery	Biofilm model design, biofilm imaging, bacterial transcriptomics, bioreporter design, HTP antimicrobial testing
Ingrid Dreveny	Proteases in the ubiquitin system, protein structure, structure-aided drug design, enzyme specificity, proteins in biotechnology	Macromolecular X-ray crystallography, isothermal titration calorimetry, biochemistry, protein engineering
Ruth Griffin	Oral vaccine delivery systems, infectious diseases	Gene cloning and protein purification, formulation, in vivo immunogenicity and challenge studies, antibody assays
John Heap	Engineering biology/ synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, biotechnology, biocatalysis, enzyme evolution	Engineering biology/ synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, biotechnology, biocatalysis, enzyme evolution
Stephan Heeb	Bacterial infections, virulence, quorum sensing, gene expression, antimicrobial strategies	Bacterial genomics, RNA-Seq, RNA-protein interactions, construction of bacterial vectors
Katalin Kovacs	Engineering biology, metabolic engineering, autotrophic microorganisms, bioelectochemical synthesis, circular economy	Molecular biology, microscopy, microbial cultivation, electrofermentation, plastid engineering
Alvaro Mata	Biomaterials, tissue engineering, regenerative materials, in vitro models, biomineralization	Self-assembly, bioprinting, electron microscopy
Nigel Minton	Exploiting autotrophy, reducing carbon emissions, industrial biotechnology, microbial pathogenesis, anaerobes	Synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, gas fermentation, genome editing, therapeutic delivery systems
Paloma Ordóñez Morán	Stem cells, inflammation, differentiation, cancer, tumour heterogeneity	3D organoids, primary mouse and human cell culture, stem cell-based approaches, in vivo assays, gene expression
Ellis O'Neil	Natural products, algal biotechnology, biotransformation	Analytical chemistry, mass spectrometry, protein expression and purification, genome mining
Philippe Soucaille	Metabolic engineering, systems biology, synthetic biology, microbial physiology – CO2 fixation	Enzyme evolution, bacterial genome editing, fluxomics, proteomics, transcriptomics
Neil Thomas	Enzyme mechanism, enzyme inhibitors, biopharmaceutics, silk and other protein-based biomaterials, nanobiotechnology	Bioconjugation, chemiluminescence, un-natural amino acid mutagenesis, enzyme activity assays, enzyme inhibitor design
Huw Williams	NMR, molecular interactions, molecular structure, analytical, kinetics	NMR, molecular interactions, solid state NMR, molecular dynamics, molecular structure
Klaus Winzer	Microbial metabolism, biological engineering, synthetic biology, bacterial carbon capture, quorum sensing	Anaerobic microbiology, gas fermentation, genetic modification of bacteria, adaptive laboratory evolution
Jing Yang	Biomaterials, 3D bioprinting, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, immunomodulatory materials	3D printing, biomaterial preparation, chemical characterisation, mechanical testing, cell culture
Mischa Zelzer	Biointerfaces; biomaterials; peptide materials; hydrogels; computational material science	Surface modification and analysis; polymerisation kinetics; light and enzyme responsive materials; material characterisation
Ying Zhang	Industrial biotechnology, biological engineering, single-carbon utilising bacteria for carbon capture, sustainable bioproducts, biorecovery.	Synthetic biology, bacterial genome editing, metabolic engineering, protein engineering, strain improvement

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