2 / 8
Page 11
Notes:
allied
academies
August 16-17, 2018 | Copenhagen, Denmark
Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing
International Conference on
Journal of Archives of Industrial Biotechnology | Volume 2
Fermented insect pheromones for environmentally friendly pest control
Irina Borodina
1,3
, Carina Holkenbrink
1
, Marie I. Dam
1
, Baojian Ding
2
, Hong-Lei Wang
2
and
Christer Löfstedt
2
1
BioPhero ApS, Denmark
2
Lund University, Sweden
3
Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
S
ex pheromones, which are produced naturally by insects
for mating communication, present an environmentally
safe alternative to insecticides for pest control. Whereas
insecticides have severe negative effects on public health and
the environment, pheromones are biodegradable species-
specific compounds that neither affect beneficial species in
the ecosystem, nor exert adverse effects on human health.
Pheromones are currently produced by chemical synthesis,
which requires expensive and often hazardous specialty
chemicals as starting materials and usually results in toxic waste
as by-products.
We developed a biotechnology-based solution to enable
cheaper andenvironmentally friendlyproductionof pheromone
components from renewable feedstocks using yeast cell
factories. This required reconstruction of synthetic biochemical
pathways towards pheromones in yeast, extensive engineering
of the yeast host to improve the flux towards the products, and
optimization of fermentation processes. This technology paves
the way for safer pest control in agriculture.
Speaker Biography
Irina Borodina is senior scientist and group leader at the Novo Nordisk Foundation
Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark (DTU). She is also co-
founderandCEOofBioPheroApS.Herresearchfocusesonadvancingthemethodologies
for metabolic engineering of cell factories for the sustainable production of bulk and
high-value chemicals. She received PhD degree in Biotechnology from DTU. She has
authored 37 peer-reviewed articles, which have been cited over 1,600 times, and she
is co-inventor of 9 patent applications.
e:
ib@bio.dtu.dk