FBRH FlexBio collaboration

Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub partners The University of Manchester and IBioIC have been collaborating to scale-up and optimise novel routes to biological carbon capture and biomaterial production using the Flexbio facility at Heriot-Watt University.

The 8x2L DASGIP parallel reactor system was used to define and optimise the parameters affecting the growth and productivity of an engineered cyanobacterial host using design of experiment (DOE) principles, with the aim to produce biomaterials from CO2. The experiments so far have been a great success and have been used to creative a predictive model suggesting optimum conditions to be tested in the final run in February. The data will underpin future scale up efforts and will form part of an upcoming academic publication. We hope that this project is but the first of many and look forward to many more successful collaborations facilitated by the Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub.

Thank you to Elise Viau (pictured left) and Emilia Cropper (pictured right) of FlexBio for their patience in painstakingly retrofitting the DASGIP vessels with thousands of LEDs to provide the photosynthetic bacteria with light.