Abstract:
The demand for energy and chemicals is steadily growing, and despite the current low oil prices the stockpiles of petroleum reserves are quickly being depleted. As a result, new technologies capable of utilizing low value feedstocks and waste gasses, such as H2, CO and CO2, must be developed to meet our growing need for liquid fuels and chemicals. The most efficient pathway for anaerobic CO2 fixation using a source of electrons is the Wood-Ljungdahl Pathway (WLP) employed by acetogens. The WLP is however ATP limited, thus leading to slow cell growth, low cell densities and low rates of metabolite production. Strategies employing a combination of modern tools of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, syntrophic co-cultures, substrate engineering, and bioreactor design have a great potential to resolve the native difficulties using a combination of carbohydrates and gases as substrates. The goal is to convert all carbon molecules into products and prevent CO2 release by enhancing the biological process via renewable electrons through H2 or electricity. Such strategies can lead to robust, sustainable and economic production of metabolites valuable as fuels, precursor of fuels or commodity chemicals.
Bio:
E. Terry Papoutsakis is the Unidel Eugene DuPont Professor at the Dept. of Chem. & Biomolecular Engineering & the Dept. of Biological Sciences at the University of Delaware. Papoutsakis’ group is active and has made important contributions in the areas of clostridia genetics and metabolic engineering with emphasis recently in syntrophic co-cultures and synthetic methylotrophy; animal-cell biotechnology; & stem-cell bioengineering with emphasis on hematopoietic engineering and the use of extracellular vesicles.
Dr. Papoutsakis has been recognized by numerous awards, including election to National Academy of Engineering (USA) in 2018, the 2017 American Chemical Society (ACS) E. V. Murphree Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, the 2013 DIC Wang for Excellence in Biochemical Engineering, SBE/AIChE (Soc. Biological Eng.; Amer. Institute of Chem. Engineers), the 2012 James E. Bailey Award, SBE/AIChE; election as Fellow of ACS (2011), the 2010 Metabolic Engineering Award, the 2005 Amgen Biochemical Engineering Award, the 2004 Merck Cell Culture Engineering Award & the 2003 Alpha Chi Sigma AIChE Award. He received his BS/MS in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens; MS/PhD in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University. He has supervised over 60 PhD, 30 MS, 31 postdoctoral and 65 undergraduate research students, funded by over $37 million in grants from NIH, NSF, DOE, ARPA-E, ONR, ARO & EPA.
Join us for the drinks reception at 15.30 in the ACEX foyer, followed by the Distinguished Seminar at 16.00!