Recipient: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. (Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science – MPG)
Funding: Go-Bio initial (01/10/2022 to 30/09/2023, EUR 96,697)

Project description:

The development of production strains is an essential part of the bioprocess industry and is used, among other things, for the production of drugs, vaccines and enzymes. It requires efficient genome engineering methods, which are currently only available for a very limited number of bacterial and fungal species. The scientists have identified a family of proteins that mediate the rearrangement of DNA segments, DNA recombination, with extremely high efficiency. This innovative recombination system is over 10 times more efficient than previous methods and differs significantly in genetic and functional terms: A simple repair mechanism that works independently of the organism can significantly accelerate bacterial strain breeding for the bioprocess industry. Initial preliminary results show that the mechanism is active in industrially relevant, evolutionarily distant species with comparably increased efficiency, for which existing technologies have thus far proven to be inefficient. The reconstitution of the developed system of purified components could revolutionise in vitro cloning applications such as the complex multi-fragment assembly of large DNA constructs due to its increased precision and efficiency.

In this exploratory phase findings for a subsequent feasibility phase are collected by means of FTO, market and competition analyses. By translating the scientific idea into a finished product, a significant contribution could be made to the development of production strains in the bioprocess industry.