(325a) Invited Talk: Advancing Biosynthesis: Automated Adaptive Laboratory Evolution for Enhanced Strain Engineering

A suite of efficient, high-throughput strain engineering techniques is needed to generate scalable bioprocesses to power the bioeconomy. The demand for such technologies is increasing, given the environmental impact of nonrenewable and carbon-emitting processes. Our lab focuses on creating an automated platform for biological experimentation and strain engineering of microbes, primarily using adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE). ALE uses growth selection to generate useful strains for various bioproduction processes under defined selection pressures, is strain agnostic, and can be combined with whole genome sequencing to identify beneficial mutations. This talk will provide an overview of the technology platform, recent advancements following a complete hardware redesign, and its implications for accelerating strain design and optimization for biosynthesis. I will highlight a case study demonstrating our ALE platform's application in improving Bacillus subtilis heat tolerance for biocomposite fabrication. The evolved strains showed enhanced heat-shock tolerance, identified through mutation analysis, and enabled successful integration into thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) via high-temperature melt processing. This advancement created tough, biodegradable biocomposites with retained programmed functions, showcasing the potential of automated ALE in developing sustainable industrial materials. Additional use cases will illustrate the platform's applicability to various challenges in metabolic engineering and bioproduction, along with a future outlook.