Microbial Bioengineering Laboratory

What is the key question we are trying to answer through our research?

Microorganisms make life on planet Earth possible and have helped humans since time immemorial in so-called traditional biotechnologies, for example in the production of bread, cheese, beer, wine, or yogurt. In the last hundred years or so, microorganisms have also been successfully used as so-called cell factories in the production of medicines (e.g. insulin) or certain chemicals (e.g. ethanol or lactic acid). The biggest challenge for modern microbial biotechnology is the efficient production of specialty and especially commodity chemicals (which are usually the basic chemical building blocks of e.g. biofuels, food supplements, biomaterials, or textiles) using renewable carbon and energy sources. The key question is where the limits of microbial physiology and microbial metabolism lie to enable the efficient conversion of simple sugars, organic acids, one-carbon substrates, or more complex polymeric waste feedstocks into the desired chemicals. Can we approach and overcome these limits using modern bioengineering approaches? The Microbial Bioengineering Laboratory team is trying to answer this fundamental question through its research. Answering it is essential for the development of new technologies that will enable humanity to gradually transition from a fossil-dependent economy to a more sustainable way of life.

About the laboratory

We engineer bacteria and their metabolic and regulatory pathways for understanding and biotechnology and educate new generations of microbiologists/bioengineers at Masaryk University. Our long-term ambition is to combine microbiology with molecular biology, biochemistry, and bioinformatics, and work on interdisciplinary projects that contribute to the fundamental knowledge of the microbial systems studied but also have significant application potential.

For detailed insight into the microbial metabolism and physiology and for more efficient valorization of substrates from waste materials, we modify microorganisms and their biochemical pathways using state-of-the-art methods of synthetic biology, metabolic and protein engineering.