Developing new strategies to improve the sustainability of human-made ecosystems. This area is a part of our highly collaborative research effort to address virtually all anthropogenic methane sources by developing an environment-friendly approach to converting small sources of methane to value-added chemicals (see our current projects).
Current research projects:
ARPA-e: Process intensification of biological natural gas conversion through innovative bioreactor design. (in collaboration with Dr. D. Griffin, LanzaTech). The goal of this research is to establish a microbial platform for the targeted production of diesel fuel from natural gas. The research aims include (1) the metabolic engineering of a catalytic system to increase fatty acid production; and (2) the optimization of the overall fermentation process, including bioreactor design, gas-transfer, and operational parameters to obtain maximum productivity of biomass from natural gas with low input/recycling of nutrients. Dr. Kalyuzhnaya’s team contributes to the construction of novel methanotrophic traits producing long-chain alkanes and the optimization of cultivation parameters including novel sources of nitrogen (urea instead of nitrate) and sulfur (H2S instead of sulfate).
DOE: Biogas valorization: development of a methane-to-adipic acid bioprocess. (in collaboration with Dr. M. Guarnieri, NREL and Dr. M. Flickinger at NCSU). This work is focused on the development of a methanotrophic catalyst for conversion of biogas into adipic acid, an industrially important precursor for polymer synthesis. The core of the fermentation technology is based on the metabolic alteration of carbon flux from C1-to-C3 and the optimization of multiphase microchannel bioreactors, where the catalytic process happens at a phase boundary between a gas and a liquid. Dr. Kalyuzhnaya’s team uses systems biology approaches to obtain a predictive understanding of flux through metabolic pathways in M. alcaliphilum sp. 20Z involved in production and utilization of precursors to adipic acid synthesis in the context of the global metabolic network.
