Molecular Genetics and Bio-Engineering

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In a number of cases the desired biobased building blocks and/or biobased materials can be directly isolated from plants or microbes, or be achieved by chemical modification of such building blocks or materials. However, an alternative is to genetically modify plants or microbes in such a way that they produce a novel molecule that can be used for synthesis of biobased materials with different properties. For this several metabolic routes should be studied, for instance those responsible for producing lignin, hemicellulose, cellulose, alkaloids, etc.. Then directed changes to enzymes can be made to obtain new or adapted products. In this course the techniques available for creating genetically modified organisms (GMOs) with changed enzymatic activities will be studied. Furthermore, the use of fermenters to achieve large- scale production of specific plant- or microbe-derived compounds will be an important topic of the course. Fermentor technology is used by industry to get economically viable production of cell-derived products. The control of fermenters needs careful considerations of a number of different factors like the choice of organism, growth conditions, growth media, agitation, etc. Description of skills training during the course: During the lab skills metabolic routes will be studied. When possible (ML-1 and ML-II facilities available) genetically modified bacteria will be made and genetically modified plant cells studied. Additionally, specific building blocks and interesting compounds will be isolated from plant-derived biomass. The design of experiments will be a major goal of the skills training.