Bio-production of natural herbicides in support of sustainable agriculture

SBRC Nottingham is one of three UK centres created by the BBSRC/EPSRC in 2014 and has received £14.3M in funding for a 5 year period. The proposed project will contribute towards generating new intellectual understanding and knowledge relating to metabolic engineering, enzyme engineering, computation biology systems and synthetic biology and its applications in sustainable production of natural herbicides from waste gasses using gas fermenting microbes.

With a growing world population, maximising crop yield and minimising weed growth becomes ever more critical. Consequently, farmers turn to herbicides to boost crop yields. Given increasing weed resistance to current commercial herbicides, there is an urgent need for diversification of herbicide types, towards more environmentally friendly herbicides using more sustainable production processes.

Chemosynthesis of a broader range of herbicides is possible, but relies on petrochemical feedstocks and may not be techno-economically feasible. A more innovative solution is a biosynthetic route through microbial fermentation using low-cost, abundant 1-carbon (C1) gases as the feedstock. In aid of sustainable agriculture as a UN development goal, the project will optimise a biochemical pathway through enzyme engineering, computation biology, systems and synthetic biology approaches.

This 4-year PhD project is part of a University-funded Doctoral Training Programme in Synthetic Biology and associated with Nottingham’s new BBSRC/EPSRC Synthetic Biology Research Centre. This project aims to produce natural herbicides in a C1 metabolizing host in aid of sustainable agriculture as a UN development goal. A retrosynthesis algorithm will be utilised to generate a portfolio of novel, synthetic biochemical pathways from central metabolites to the target compounds. Students will also benefit from a diverse range of training opportunities, including specialist workshops, lectures and seminars, as well as participation in Nottingham’s yearly BBSRC DTP Spring School event. This project will be supervised by Dr Katalin Kovacs, Dr Elaine O’Reilly and Prof. Alex Conradie.

UK Students with a degree in Biotechnology, Biochemistry, Biochemical Engineering, Microbiology or other degree that covers both Biology and Chemistry who have achieved an Upper Second Class degree or better from the UK. Students with an equivalent degree from the European Union who also hold an accepted English Language qualification (IELTS 6.5 average; no element less than 6).

Candidates interested in applying for this research opportunity should send a copy of their CV and 2 academic references directly to [Email Address Removed], [Email Address Removed] and [Email Address Removed] for consideration. Candidates shortlisted for interview will be contacted following the deadline.