Session 1: Metabolic Engineering and Protein Design
Saturday, 20.06
9:30 - 11:30
Phillipp Elbers Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg
Enzyme Design for a Sustainable Future
Nature has spent billions of years evolving the biochemical processes that sustain life. At the core of these processes are enzymes–molecular machines of remarkable precision and efficiency. However, evolution optimized enzymes for survival, not for biotechnological applications. Computational protein design provides a route to construct these molecular machines from scratch for specific purposes beyond the constraints of natural evolution.
In the Bunzel group, we design photoenzymes for sustainable solar energy conversion, for example, to convert sunlight into electricity in biological solar cells. Using computational design, we introduced photosensitizer binding pockets into existing proteins. The resulting photoactive complexes were subsequently improved by directed evolution over five rounds of mutagenesis and screening. The final photoenzyme produces 5.0-fold higher photocurrents than the photosensitizer alone. Building on this foundation, we further leverage protein design to assemble these enzymes into highly structured nanoscale architectures, enhancing system performance beyond what single enzymes can achieve. Ultimately, our work provides an avenue towards sustainable photoenzymes for solar energy conversion and enhances our computational design abilities to address global sustainability challenges.
Dr. Maren Nattermann Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg
(Re) routing one-carbon molecules in synthetic pathways – working in- and outside of host metabolism
Engineered microbes offer exciting new opportunities for the sustainable production of value-added chemicals from cheap feedstock. In contrast to traditional chemical synthesis, they do not require high temperatures, pressure, or toxic solvents. One-carbon substrates, such as carbon dioxide, formate and methanol, are prime candidates for sustainable substrates. However, they provide little to no energy to the cell, demanding highly efficient assimilation pathways. To mirror this efficiency in synthetic one-carbon assimilation, pathways must be compatible with host metabolism. They cannot deplete key metabolic intermediates, or disrupt the cellular energy balance. Here, we discuss two strategies of implementing a formate reduction module in E. coli – growth-coupling, forcing adaptation to host metabolism by applying evolutionary pressure, and orthogonality, producing value-added compounds directly from formate without any integration into core metabolism.
Prof. Daniel Schindler Centre for Molecular Biology, Heidelberg
Synthetic yeast and synthetic biology approaches to utilise biopolymers from waste streams
Despite being more than 25 years old, synthetic biology is often referred to as an emerging field and is described as seeing biology from the engineer's perspective. Rapid technological advances in synthetic biology more recently have enabled researchers to design, synthesise and use synthetic chromosomes and genomes, giving rise to the field of synthetic genomics. An exceptional international consortium has synthesised all sixteen yeast chromosomes according to a set of dedicated design rules. The finalised chromosomes have been available since 2025 and are currently being consolidated into a single strain. This presentation provides insights into the Sc2.0 project and explains how synthetic yeast strains can be used alongside other synthetic biology approaches to create a more holistic approach to the circular bioeconomy.