Research Highlights

Prof. dr. Roel Bovenberg

Cell and pathway engineering inspired by synthetic biology

Industrial biotechnology relies and robust enzymes and cell factories for the versatile production of a variety of compounds from biofuels to fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Synthetic biology and modern CRISPR/Cas tools allow dedicated engineering of enzymes and entire metabolic pathways. The Bovenberg group, collaborating with the groups of Driessen, van der Klei, and Janssen, focuses on genetic an metabolic pathway engineering of filamentous fungi (primarily Penicillium chrysogenum) for the production of (new) antibiotics. Bioinformatics proved to be instrumental in analyzing silent genome clusters^a,b, which are further studied biochemically and subsequently expressed in suitable hosts^c,d. Synthetic biology and CRISPR/Cas approaches are fully integrated to improve yields or to modify compounds, such as Roquefortin D^e-g.

^aGenome Biol Evol (2010); ^bNature Rev Microbiol (2011); ^cPLoS One (2013); ^dJ Biol Chem (2013); ^eBMC Genomics (2015); ^fChemBioChem (2015); ^gACS Synth Biol (2016)