Petroleum-based commodities and food ingredients are predominantly produced by chemical synthesis and intensive agriculture, respectively, but are regarded unsustainable owing to their consumption of fossilized carbon as well as their significant environmental footprints determined by, e.g., emission of greenhouse gasses, land degradation and loss of biodiversity. As opposed to conventional processes, bioelectrosynthesis of food ingredients and chemical feedstocks can be performed in bioreactors that have a comparably small land footprint, can be operated year-round on barren land and are compatible with renewable energy and CO2 as a carbon feedstock. Bioelectrosynthetic CO2 conversions have been demonstrated with various biological systems including, e.g., reductase enzymes immobilized on submerged inorganic electrodes as well as autotrophic bacteria capable of oxidizing electrolytically generated hydrogen. The desirable conditions at which chemical syntheses are performed differ strongly from those under which biocatalysts have naturally evolved, e.g., in terms of temperature and substrate concentrations. In order to maximise their suitability for technical applications, ideal biocatalyst candidates need to be isolated, screened, characterised under conditions relevant to the desired technical applications and engineered towards improved performance.

In this lecture, recent advancements in the mechanistic understanding of enzymatic CO2 reduction as well as application and genetic engineering of Knallgas bacteria for electrocatalytic CO2 conversions will be presented. These include the mutational analysis of CO2 reduction by a selenocysteine-containing formate dehydrogenase as well as a comparative analysis of microbial CO2 conversion to beta-alanine, lactic acid and protein-rich biomass by electro- and gas fermentation. The presented findings support the development of more efficient enzymes and microbes for the production of edible microbial biomass and chemicals from CO2.

15:00: Coffee Break

15:15: Kirstin Kochems (B1, AG Jacobs): Mechanical properties of pure protein membranes made from fungal hydrophobins

15:30: Sina Ravanbodshirazi (C1, AG Ott): How to assess the molecular recognition fidelity of AA-tRNA synthase in competition with a non-canoncial amino acid

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