The US Department of Energy is supporting a project from DMC Limited and Duke University to develop scalable and cost-effective next generation semi-continuous fermentation based processes for biofuels, reducing commercial scale capital costs 5-10 fold.
The rationale? Rapid engineering of robust microbial hosts enables the production of a broad diversity of fuels, specialty chemicals, flavors, fragrances, nutraceuticals, natural products, pharmaceuticals, and APIs.
What is Dynamic Metabolic Control? It is technology that dramatically reduces the cost and development timeline from discovery to commercial performance. It has the potential to democratize metabolic engineering efforts, creating a multitude of commercially viable bioprocesses and delivering sustainable routes to both new and existing products.
Essentially, it decouples growth from production, creating modular chassis strains that are rapidly configured to produce any molecule.
Duke University and DMC co-founder Mike Lynch prepared this overview on the technology’s progress and promise for the DOE Project Peer Review meetings.
