Our research into microbes and microbial engineering in the area of 'engineering biology' is exploring how we can harness the power of bacteria and fungi to solve pressing issues in fields such as fuel production, medicine design and manufacture and disease control. We have two main teams working within this area: The Nottingham Engineering Biology Labs () and the Fungal Biology Group. Both have strong relationships with industry.
Professor John Heap, Dr Ruth Griffin, Dr Klaus Winzer and Dr Ying Zhang is exploring metabolic pathways in specific species of Clostridium. Their aim is to generate strains that convert primarily greenhouse gasses into valuable platform chemicals and biofuels. NEBL, led by John Heap, uses a range of genetic and biological techniques to engineer microbes with new useful properties to develop powerful synthetic biology technologies including massively parallel genetic design and construction, and design or edit DNA from individual DNA bases (‘letters’) all the way up to rewriting whole genomes. These technologies are applied to engineer microbes and their metabolism for applications in biomanufacturing, biocatalysis, sustainability, and health; often using diverse organisms best suited to each challenge, including Clostridium, E. coli, yeast and cyanobacteria.
Closely linked to Engineerinf Biology, the Fungal Biology Group is led by Dr Matthias Brock, Professor Paul Dyer and Professor Simon Avery. Together, they study fungal biotechnology, diversity and pathogenesis. This includes the development of anti-fungal agents for controlling diseases and food spoilage, discovery of novel fungal products, strain improvement for food and industrial fungi using sexual and GM approaches, stress responses of yeasts and filamentous fungi, and tools for monitoring fungal infections.