Chemical Engineering Flashcards
Bioengineering microbial communities
1)Microorganisms are present in almost every habitat on earth. They are drivers of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus cycles that form the basis of life on our planet
2)Bioengineering of individual microbial organisms or microbial communities has great potential in agriculture and bioremediation industry
3)Microbiome engineering requires genome-level engineering to stably maintain certain traits
Microbial production of advanced biofuels
1)Utilization of fossil fuels for electricity and heat production and for transportation accounts for 25% and 14% of the total greenhouse gas emissions, respectively
2)The consumption of organic substrates by microorganisms and utilization in metabolic processes generates useful products, which can be used as a fuel to produce energy
3)The challenge of producing biofuel using ‘microbial factories’ is to generate a large amount of fuel on a comparatively lower budget and greater efficiency as compared to the conventional fossil fuels
Enhancement of Microbial Production of advanced biofuels
1)Microorganisms exhibits a specific metabolic pathway and different types of catalytic enzymes for biofuel production.
2)In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, direct decarboxylation of pyruvate will lead to the production of ethanol.
3)In Escherichia coli, CoA activates the acyl group during pyruvate decarboxylation and then reduces to ethanol.
4)Metabolic engineering of such pathways could be fruitful in increasing the productivity of biofuels. This can be applied in numerous ways for enhancing microbial biofuel production.
Microbial production of advanced biorefinery
-Biorefineries are facilities that convert biomass feedstocks to bio-based energy, fuels, materials and chemicals.
Importance of biorefineries:
1)Growing demands for energy, fuel, materials and chemicals
2)Finite availability of fossil fuel resources
3)Reality of climate change and need to reduce greenhouse gases
4)Competitiveness within the global economy
5)Need to stimulate growth within rural economies
Microbes in wastewater treatment
1)Wastewater treatment refers to sewage treatment of domestic wastewater treatment
2)Process of removing contaminants from wastewater to produce water that is safe for environment
3)Types of treatment: physical, biological and chemical
4)Biological wastewater treatment
What is Biological wastewater treatment?
Biological wastewater treatment:
1)Involves the usage of microorganisms such as bacteria
2)They metabolize the biological content of the sewage
3)The contaminants of organic substances are digested as food along with other energy source by the cell
Industrial scale up for bioengineering of microbes
1)Develop phenotypically stable strains that prevent a phenotypic drift during subculturing of the seed cultures
2)Track subpopulation and causes for phenotypic drift or heterogeneity within the culture
3)Regulate genes and pathways to respond to inhibitory byproducts and fluctuating stress to reduce negative selections and enhance robust strain performance
Bioengineering Strategies for Developing Vaccines
1)Vaccinations are, to date, the best and most economical way to control outbreaks and have been highly successful for several pathogens.
2)Originally, vaccines for viral pathogens are primarily live attenuated or inactivated and can risk reversion to virulence or confer inadequate immunity.
3)Recent trend of using potent biomolecules like DNA, RNA and protein antigenic components to synthesize vaccines for diseases has shown promising but it remains challenge to translate due to their susceptibility to degradation during storage and after delivery.
4)Advances in bioengineering technology for vaccine design have made it possible to control the physiochemical properties of the vaccines for rapid synthesis, heightened antigen presentation, safer formulations, and more robust immunogenicity.
Biomaterial-Based Vaccines
1)Main hurdle in designing any vaccine is to maintain a balance between its safety and its efficacy.
-Effective vaccines, like live attenuated or inactivated whole virus vaccine, always come with the greatest safety risk. While safe vaccines such as subunit vaccines are often inefficient in inducing robust immune response in the body.
2)Speed in vaccine manufacturing so that the clinical trials can commence rapidly.
3)The modifiability of biomaterials provides a quick solution to obtain plug-and-play systems in which the components can be easily switched to adjust to new antigens.
Advantages of biomaterial-based vaccines
1)Biomaterials provide unique physical and chemical properties like shape, size, chemistry and tunable degradation rate.
2)Their surface chemistry affects their immunogenicity hence providing means to alter the immune response.
3)The shape of the biomaterials can change its interaction with immune cells and affect the antigen uptake by the host cell.
4)Biomaterials also enable the co-delivery of antigens with adjuvants to cells in target, which help activate immune and adaptive immune responses.
5)Allowing Improved Delivery of Antigen
