Project No. 1.1.1.2/VIAA/2/18/278

Source of funding: European Regional Development Fund Specific Objective 1.1.1 “Improve
research and innovation capacity and the ability of Latvian research institutions to attract external funding, by investing in human capital and infrastructure” 1.1.1.2. measure “Post-doctoral Research Aid”. Project application selection round No.3.

Project period: 01.01.2019 ‒ 31.12.2021 (36 months)

Total budget: 133 805.88 EUR (113 734.99 EUR from EU as ERDF funding; 6690.31 EUR – from the University of Latvia)

Project coordinator: Senior researcher, Dr.sc.ing. Agris Pentjuss, agris.pentjuss@lu.lv

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Project summary:

Zymomonas mobilis is a natural ethanologen and uses Entner – Doudoroff (ED) pathway with 50% less ATP compared to glycolysis pathway, broad Ph range high alcohol tolerance and is defined has GRAS (generally regarded as safe) status. Therefore, Z.mobilis is a good alternative for the production of top building block chemicals like succinate, lactate, glycerate, glutamate from substrates including glucose, fructose, xylose. They are precursors for many secondary metabolites used in food, feed, pharmaceuticals and many other branches. Stoichiometric metabolic modelling in recent years has proven to be a powerful approach for a mechanistic understanding of complicated systems and processes and can be used to increase productivity and yield of chemicals.

ZYMMODEL will focus on model based strain design development suggesting knockouts and heterologous gene expressions to estimate the potential of industrial applicability of Z.mobilis in production of building block chemicals. Genome scale stoichiometric models of metabolism will be updated and optimized using flux balance analysis and structural analysis approaches. Published Omics data will be used for further constraining of the model where possible. ZYMMODEL will apply synergistically scientific fields of math, biology and information technology and disseminate this innovative approach for industrial biotechnology society more generally.

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More information about the project (in Latvian) can be found here.

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