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August 16-17, 2018 | Copenhagen, Denmark
Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing
International Conference on
Journal of Archives of Industrial Biotechnology | Volume 2
Functional metagenomic mining and comprehensive pathway optimization using synthetic selections
Hans J Genee
1,2
, Adam J Riesselman
3
, Søren D Petersen
1
, Sangeeta Nath
4,5
,Luisa S Gronenberg
2
, Bo Salomonsen
2
, Leanne Jade G Chan
5,6
,
Melissa Nhan
5,6
, Edward E K Baidoo
5,6
, George Wang
5,6
, Ernst Oberortner
4,5
,Nathan J Hillson
5,6
, Jay D Keasling
1,5,6,7
, Debora S Marks
3
,
Christopher J Petzold
5,6
, Samuel Deutsch
4,5
and Morten O A Sommer
1
1
Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
2
Biosyntia ApS, Denmark
3
Harvard Medical School,USA.
4
DOE Joint Genome Institute,USA
5
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
6
Joint BioEnergy Institute, USA
7
University of California, USA
B
y solving complexmetabolic engineering challenges, Biosyntia,
a Copenhagen-based biotech company, delivers biological
manufacturing of ingredients and high value chemicals. In this
talk, co-founder and CSO, Hans Genee, explains how the company
with co-workers deploy synthetic selection systems to enable high-
throughputminingandfunctional validationofbiological functions.
We present a synthetic selection system for thiamine, a vitamin of
crucial interest for industrial biotechnology and human health.
Usingthissystemweminedsoilandgutmetagenomesforthiamine
transporters and identified severalmembers of a novel transporter
class. Additionally, to probe the sequence-function landscape of
the complex and tightly regulated thiamine biosynthesis pathway
of Escherichia coli, and to speed up the engineering of optimized
strains, we applied the synthetic selection to interrogate 16,384
refactoredpathwayvariantsthatsamplethesyntheticdesignspace.
Thisapproachenabledrapid identificationof newandnon-intuitive
pathway configurations leading to high thiamine production
levels. Combined, our results demonstrate how synthetic biology
approaches can effectively be deployed to functionally mine
metagenomes and elucidate sequence-function relationships
of complex transport and biosynthesis systems in bacteria
Speaker Biography
Hans J Genee is the founder of Biosyntia ApS. He founded the biotech academy
camp, and his activities in synthetic biology has led to peer reviewed publications, the
McKinsey Award for exceptional achievements, the SBR-DTU prize for most innovative
project, and the Novo Scholarship. He is a
Ph.Dcin Biotechnology at the NNF Center for
Biosustainability and holds anM.Sc.Eng. degreewith honors in systems biology from the
Technical University of Denmark, Delft University of Technology, and Harvard University.
e:
hjg@biosyntia.com