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Laboratory evolution for industrially relevant phenotypes in yeast

Time: Wed 2018-04-18 13.00

Location: AlbaNova, room FB42

Participating: Prof. Antonius J.A. van Maris

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Various new yeast-based processes for production of chemicals and fuels from renewable resources have become reality over the past decade. Metabolic engineering, accelerated by breath-taking advances in synthetic biology, including the recent addition of CRISPR to the toolbox, enables introduction and optimization of pathways towards native and non-native products.

Despite the growing number of successes in yeast metabolic engineering, many cases remain in which the current level of understanding is insufficient for knowledge based approaches. In such cases laboratory evolution, also known as evolutionary engineering, is a powerful scientific approach to obtain strains with improved phenotypes by combining the (natural) rate of mutation with a ‘designed’ selective pressure. Elucidation of the mutations underlying the phenotypes acquired by laboratory evolution, also known as reverse metabolic engineering, not only increases the scientific understanding, but also turns this knowledge into portable genetic elements able to confer the said phenotype to other strains.

Based on a variety of phenotypic examples, including expansion of substrate range, robustness, elimination of alcoholic fermentation and nutrient independence, this presentation will illustrate the possibilities, tools and the common ‘you get what you select for’ caveat of laboratory evolution on its own or in combination with metabolic engineering.​
 

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