Exploiting Pseudomonas for the production of platform chemicals for the plastics industry.

Our industrial partner produces approximately one third of a platform chemical for the plastics industry in a market that is expected to reach $18 billion USD by 2020. The majority of the precursor materials for the plastics industry currently come from unsustainable fossil fuels. Significant attention is being aimed at producing these materials from sustainable feedstocks by exploiting the biosynthetic potential of bacteria. Our industrial partners have constructed a biosynthetic pathway to produce this platform chemical in a commonly used biotechnology chassis organism so that the cost and sustainability of plastic production can be improved. This synthetic biology approach has been moderately successful but the yields are low. The predominant reason for this is that above certain concentrations, the product inhibits the growth of commonly used chassis organisms. We have discovered that organisms such as Pseudomonas spp. tolerate much higher levels of this high value product and we have identified the genes responsible. This will be exploited in two ways:

1. Can desirable traits of Pseudomonas be transferred into the existing chassis organism to improve tolerance and / or
2. Can the synthetic pathway be adjusted and stably maintained in an optimised Pseudomonas host?