Molecular Infection Biology

Genetic tractability of bacterial cells allows generating synthetic microbial chassis platforms (SMCPs) with remarkable biotechnological applications but their functionality currently faces important off-genome limitations due to deficient protein-protein interactions, unfavorable protein stoichiometry or generation of toxic intermediates that ultimately compromise the industrial production processes. To solve this problem, Rafts4Biotech project will take advantage of our recent discovery, that bacteria are able to organize subcellular membrane compartments similar to the so-called lipid rafts of eukaryotic cells, to improve/protect specific cellular processes. This TFM offer is placed within the number of activities of the larger Rafts4Biotech project. The aim of this action is to engineer bacterial cells to confine biotechnologically relevant reactions into bacterial lipid rafts. We expect to optimize their stoichiometry and protect cells from undesirable metabolic interferences and to produce new generation reliable and robust SMCPs in which industrial production processes are confined in bacterial lipid rafts, released from their classical off-genome limitations and optimized for industrial production. Rafts4Biotech consortium is coordinated by the laboratory of Daniel lopez (CNB, Spain), nine countries of the European Union participates in this project and combines different expertise in synthetic biology, systems biology and mathematical modeling to translate this technology into market application. The technology developed by Rafts4Biotech will optimize multistep industrial processes and invigorate European research.