Engineering of bacteria and fermentation methods for sustainable large-scale production of alkylamines

Primary alkylamines and lactams are important bulk chemicals in the chemical industry used for the production of various consumer products, including medicines, textiles, and plastics.

They are today produced on the scale of multimillions of tonnes per year by refining crude oil through energy-demanding chemo-catalytic processes with large environmental footprints.

Sustainable methods that do not contribute to global warming are urgently needed.The aim of this project is to develop a new fermentation process for the clean, safe and sustainable production of high-volume primary amines from low-value technical lignin.

For this purpose, we will engineer a flexible recombinant biosynthetic route in the industrial platform bacterium Pseudomonas putida.

We will optimise a pathway from guaiacol (the main Kraft lignin depolymerisation product) to the caprolactam precursor 6-aminocaproic acid.

We will apply a novel directed bio-engineering strategy where biosynthetic gene clusters and fermentation conditions are co-optimised using state-of-the art combinatorial cloning methods, fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), NMR metabolomics and genome-scale metabolic modeling.The knowledge and technology generated in the project will result in a more efficient use of raw materials and allow for the introduction of fossil free and environmentally friendly methods to produce nitrogenous bulk chemicals, thereby taking one more step towards a sustainable bio-economy.