Doctoral Themes - Proposals

Powering the cell to use CO2 for commodities' production

Supervisors

Ana Paula Ribeiro, apribeiro@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

Gonçalo C. Justino, goncalo.justino@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

Registration Institution

Instituto Superior Técnico (Universidade de Lisboa)

Project description

Carbon dioxide is a universal life by-product, but its current human-derived production contributes to significant environmental challenges that must be addressed. From a chemical perspective, this inert molecule can be activated to function as the starting material of a number of commodity reagents, such as formic acid and formaldehyde, that can be used as starting points of countless substances.

A number of carbon dioxide-utilizing enzymatic systems are known in bacteria and simpler life forms, which are able to convert it directly into formic acid and formaldehyde. However, the application of these enzymes on an industrial scale is still years ahead.

Focusing on multipurpose model bacterial strains, the goal of this project is to engineer the bacterial nucleic acid information in order to obtain a stable strain that is able to steadily consume CO2 and produce starting materials for chemical synthesis in an accessible way.

The global goal of this project is to contribute to the development of CO2 utilization as starting point for organic synthetic approaches by making use of the natural cell powerhouses.

Keywords

Carbon dioxide reduction; bacterial engineering, CO2 utilization, commodities.

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