Public Funding for Protein Technologies Limited

no public description

"Bio-inspired processes will have a major impact on the challenges of the global society in the 21st century, including those associated with environmental sustainability. The employment of biocatalysts in industrial processes is expected to boost a sustainable production of chemicals, materials and fuels from renewable resources. The scope of this proposal is to encourage and translate academic research and its outcome into a novel industrially usable platform for the sustainable production of scientifically improved biomaterials by exploiting new synthesis pathways for green chemicals and novel biotechnological technologies. Green chemistry, molecular biology, enzyme technology and instrumental analytics will provide disruptive innovation and lead to the development of a novel unique and sustainable product. Amongst the broad spectrum of potential applications for this novel product comprising renewable novel chemicals and a novel detergent biomolecule, we will successfully demonstrate the cost-efficient and industrially compatible production of these new biomaterials using renewable raw materials, chemical synthesis, advanced protein engineering technologies and robust bio-manufacturing technology and its benefits in reducing the environmental and economic costs of laundry. By applying analytical NMR to the novel biomaterials -- chemical and biomolecular, their structural conformity can be verified and sebum contaminations on clothes studied, serving as an excellent technical tool to potentially accelerate design and creation of cold-cleaning relevant novel HPC product formulations with new detergents."

Since the1950s the use of chemical fertilers has grown exponentially to cope with the increased consumption of food. The use of chemical fertilsers has led to contamination, disease prone plants, reduction of microbial organisms that support soil life, etc. On the other hand organic fertilizers improve soil structure, improve water retention, enhance soil fertility and can be easily broken down by microorganisms. Although, methods to increase the organic fertilizer use have been looked into for the last few decades, the cost of production, the amounts needed to sustain the growing population and technological innovations are lagging behind to compete and replace chemical fertilser use. Biulding on previous work by this consortium, here we propose the use of microalgae, an ancestor of land plants,as a sustainable source of high value organic compounds that help crop growth; microalgae simply require natural sunlight and water to grow. The aim of this project is to identify the compounds responsible for the increased plant growth and then to extract them. In this manner we have contol of the exact amount of organic compound required for maximum crop growth.

Awaiting Public Project Summary

The objective of this project is to examine the feasibility of employing fluorescent proteins as a visual means of monitoring the glass transition (Tg) of the solutions in which stem cells are stored and transported as they pass through the cold chain. The Tg of such solutions is the single most critical determinant of patient safety: at temperatures higher than Tg, diffusion and chemical reactions will quickly result in a dangerous loss of function. In this project, we will undertake a series of experiments designed to closely callibrate the light emission levels of a particular class of fluorescent proteins with the viability of a number of well-characterized stem cells such that a loss of colour can be shown to be a reliable indicator of Tg.

In 1949, Woodland and Silver filed US Patent #2,612,994 entitled "Article Classification Through the Medium of Identifying Patterns". The barcode had been born. The objective of this project is to employ Industrial Biotechnology to develop novel bioinks that will take the Identifying Pattern to the next level of technological utility. These inks will similarly be scanned by means of a simple, light-emitting device, however, by virtue of their biological composition will be able to provide the reader not just with existing ‘static’ information such as country of origin, but a new level of ‘dynamic’ information such as time elapsed since manufacture and the temperature ranges to which the product has been exposed. The applicants have already identified the requisite biocomponents to this end, and, in this project, will examine the feasibility of employing fermentation technology to create a new class of high-value chemicals based upon them. What is innovative about this project is that hitherto it has not been possible for the Identifying Pattern to impart information after it has been printed; bioinks will allow it to continue to generate information along the full length of the supply chain.

DeepRed1 is a protein derived from the light harvesting complex of the dinoflagellate Amphidinium carterae. It is a remarkable protein in two respects: first, it is one of the most electron-efficient biological compounds yet identified and second, it can function using a wide variety of carotenoid and chlorophyll co-factors. This project aims to demonstrate the utility of DeepRed1 as a multifunctional theranostic in photodynamic therapy (PDT). It has three objectives; to prove (i) that the protein's superior light-scavenging capabiliites will allow PDT to be undertaken at greater tissue depths than is currently possible; (2) that this is a generic capability, which can be achieved with multiple differing phototoxic co-factors, and, (3) still further substitutions of those co-factors will also allow physicians to both diagnose disease and monitor responses to therapy as part of the same clinical process. The content of the project will involve screening DeepRed1 fusion proteins reconstituted with various natural and unnatural co-factors in cancer cell lines and mice. What is innovative about this project is that represents a completely fresh approach to PDT. That is to say, instead of attempting to maximize the phototoxicity of a particular chemical compound, it seeks to provide a generic method to bind such molecules in a biological matrix which itself can then be further functionalised using the many, powerful methods of protein engineering.

This study will examine the feasibility of manufacturing a recently discovered infrared fluorescent protein in microalgae. The infrared protein in question is an extremely versatile compound with mulitiple applications in the biosciences including in vitro diagnostics, drug discovery, imaging and cancer photodynamic therapy. The study will comprise two parts: (a) gene modification - the protein is currently being expressed in bacteria and the vectors will need to be appropriately modified for use in microalgae; (b) expression, purification and analysis - to demonstrate that the protein can be produced in comparable quality and yields. The change from expression in bacteria to microalgae could substantially simplify manufacturing because unlike bacteria microalgae produce carotenoids and chlorophylls in high yield - two key co-factors without which the infrared protein cannot function.

Abstract: The applicants have recently developed a low cost water disinfection device for use in the developing world. The device is extremely simple in design, comprising two interconnecting PVC pipes through which copper beads are driven by means of a hand or bicycle propelled impeller. When water is introduced into the pipes, the impeller brings the copper beads into repeated contact with any microbial pathogens that may be present effecting their 99.8% destruction within 10 minutes. The device was designed for use in densely populated shanty towns and peri-urban environments which cannot afford to construct underground sewage networks. In these communities, faecal sludge from pit latrines is commonly processed in local, interim treatment facilities staffed by 2 or 3 workers. These individuals need a safe and simple means of sterilizing the extremely dangerous, bacteria-rich water which must be squeezed from faecal sludge before the dewatered sludge can be transported to a municipal sewage facility. In this project, the applicants intend to scale up this device and establish that is a more cost-effective and sustainable means of disinfecting water than Ultra Violet (UV) light. UV light disinfection systems are widely used in waste water treatment plants throughout the world. UV light has a number of benefits compared to chemical disinfection methods, principally that it obviates the need for the transportation, storage and handling of caustic chemical agents. However, it is still a sub-optimal technology in that it suffers from four key disadvantages: (a) the substantial overhead, operating and maintenance costs of UV equipment; (b) the efficiency of UV drops significantly if the water is either turbid or contains heavy solids; (c) UV does not fully inactivate certain viruses, spores and cysts and (d) very high throughput is difficult because UV cannot effectively penetrate pipes above a certain diameter. Having already met the challenging cost targets in an application for the developing world, the applicants are confident that this technology can be rapidly scaled up and rolled out across the developed world. In this regard, the key point to grasp is that UV systems require electrical energy both to pump waste water and to destroy the pathogens within it; the same is true for recently developed systems employing electrolytic cells and oxidants such as hypochlorous acid. In the case of the applicants' technology, however, no electrical energy is required to destroy the pathogens at all - the water merely needs to contain sufficient oxygen to allow the copper to create metal ions. In Phase I, the project will focus on demonstrating that waste water from a Northumbrian Water sewage treatment works can be processed by the device to a standard that will allow it to be discharged into designated shellfish or bathing waters. In Phase II, the applicants will construct a continuous flow, pilot-scale version of the device (10,000 litres per day) which will generate robust process economics demonstrating that the technology produces safer, cheaper, cleaner water at much lower costs than those which can be attained using conventional UV disinfection.

This study will examine the feasibility of combining two cryopreservation technologies: protein biosensors that change colour on the formation of damaging ice-crystals and polymers with lower toxic side effects than those of the industry standard cryopreservative, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). The co-utilization of these two technologies will facilitate improvements both in cold chain supply management and patient safety, simultaneously reducing the risk of spoilage pre-administration and dangerous side-effects post-administration. What is innovative about this idea is that it will allow the creation of a novel platform technology in cryopreservation based on customized reagents in vessels of uniform design: at the present time, cryopreservatives, temperature sensors and packaging materials are sub-optimal, lack standardization and are used as discrete entities rather than optimized units of a cohesive system possessing a functional utility greater that that of its component parts.

The voraxial reactor is an elegant but simple device for the large-scale separation of liquids. In essence it comprises only two parts – a pipe and an impeller. Feeding a given liquid into the pipe through the impeller creates a vortex which swirls and eventually dissipates around the horizontal axis of the pipe. Voraxial reactors are mainly used in the petroleum industry to separate mixtures of oil and water. In a recently completed EPSRC sponsored research initiative, the project partners succeeded in carrying out a simultaneous enzyme catalyzed transformation/separation in a desk-top countercurrent chromatograph – driving an awkward, oxygen-sensitive reaction to 100% completion and effecting 100% product separation. This technique, which we term LLRS (liquid-liquid/reaction-separation) has the potential: (i) to convert batch bioprocesses into continuous bioprocesses; (ii) to effect cost reduction in, or dispense altogether with, the expensive down-stream processing steps of centrifugation, separation and purification, and (iii) to considerably simplify waste water handling. This project seeks to take the innovative step of combining these two technologies and demonstrating their use in a specific, large-scale industrial application with a view to subsequent commercial exploitation by the partners. The project has two key objectives: (a) to generate sufficiently robust data to file a patent in the application concerned and (b) to establish the process at pilot-scale and thereby attract further investment which will allow the partners to develop this promising enabling technology both in the specific application and a range of other applications.