(450g) Onboarding Environmental Microbes for Efficient (re)Use of Renewable Feedstocks and Consumer Wastes in Biomanufacturing

Microbial chemical factories are sustainable biomanufacturing platforms that complement traditional petrochemical industries by using renewable and/or waste alternative carbon sources. Environmental microbes that live in harsh environments with high resource competition, such as animal microbiomes, are particularly attractive due to their rich repertoire of enzymes to efficiently process diverse carbon sources and unique capacity to catalyze certain industrial chemistries at scale. However, these organisms frequently lack molecular tools to control these processes for societal applications. In this talk, I will describe our progress towards the creation of these tools in two systems. In the first example, I will highlight progress towards genetic and epigenetic tools for anaerobic fungi native to large herbivore digestive tracts and describe approaches to deploy anaerobic fungi today for direct production of fragrances and solvents from untreated feedstocks. In the second example I discuss our discovery of powerful enzymes for the degradation of post-consumer plastic wastes such as polypropylene and polystyrene from microbes native to the mealworm gut microbiome. I will also touch on emerging engineering tools that may be used to overcome some of the features that have long stymied the study and engineering of these powerful microbes.