Disclosing the bacterial domain for industrial biotechnology applications: Development of genetic circuitry for stable and controlled expression across bacteria

The lack of extensive and standardised genetic parts and tools to control gene expression and as
such to predictably engineer species from all over the bacterial domain is a major bottleneck for
industrial biotechnology (IB). As a result, when selecting the preferred production host,
biotechnological engineers generally restrict themselves to well-known workhorses, such as E. coli
and S. cerevisiae. However, the choice for a non-optimal production host as starting point for
extensive engineering ultimately results in even longer development times and associated costs due
to, e.g., a problematic downstream processing. These issues can however largely be solved by wisely
selecting the preferred production hosts, making use of the enormous heterogeneity of the
bacterial domain. Therefore, the objective of this research proposal is the development of a crossbacterial
expression system (CBES) that can be used to regulate gene expression across bacterial
species. As such, this system would abolish the limitation to use well-known production hosts in IB
and allow to use product and process-adapted production hosts. Here, genetic circuitry to stabilise
the expression of the CBES modules, which is an important requirement to compare the
performance in different hosts and under different environmental conditions, will be developed.
Next, the CBES will be validated in various bacterial hosts with appealing characteristics in view of IB
application.