(136h) Beyond the Test-Tube: Metabolic Engineering in Next-Generation Applications

Advances in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology can enable microbes to produce nearly any organic molecule of interest—from biofuels to biopolymers to pharmaceuticals. While this approach has fueled the industrial biotechnology, new challenges arise for microbe engineering when considering non-conventional settings. This talk will highlight two unique application areas. First, the use of a printable hydrogel system for encapsulating cells will be discussed as a means for both portable cultivation of engineered microbial systems as well as for responsive theranostics. Second, the engineering of microbial factories for space environments will be discussed. Robust “space-ready” organisms require an understanding of how cells respond to the unique challenges and stressors of space including microgravity, radiation, and desiccation. Together, these efforts demonstrate how to deploy metabolically engineered cells outside of traditional bioreactor settings.