BIOCHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Faculty: Shonnard

Microorganisms, such as bacteria, yeast, and fungi, are lower forms of life that exhibit amazing versatility and a vast metabolic capability. They are able to take in chemicals from the environment and subsequently extract energy and materials for life processes such as replication, propulsion, protection, and survival.

They serve as decomposers in the environment for almost all aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They can be considered as complex biochemical factories that are being utilized more and more in industrial applications such in food and beverage manufacturing, mineral processing, fuels and chemicals production, and in synthesizing pharmaceuticals. The products of microbial metabolism are also useful in commerce as industrial enzymes, as food supplements (amino acids, vitamins) and many other applications. Microorganisms are even used for environmental clean up of contaminated soils and sediments and for processing of municipal and industrial wastes.

Acknowledging the fantastic metabolic capabilities of microorganisms does not imply that improvements can not be made in the rates of production and ultimate yields of products from microbial fermentations. Research is being conducted using directed evolution methods, molecular biology/genetic engineering techniques to improve the characteristics of microbially-produced enzymes. In one recent Ph.D. project, these methods were successful in producing an improved enzyme that performs much better than the current commercial enzyme for in vitro toxicity testing of high production volume chemicals (without animal testing). In another Ph.D. project directed evolution techniques were successfully applied to double the enzymatic reaction rate and reduce production costs for the production of a chiral active pharmaceutical ingredient. New Ph.D. projects are investigating whether similar directed evolution approaches can enhance the activity of natural cellulases for the decomposition of woody biomass to soluble sugars for subsequent fermentation to ethanol (an alternative transportation fuel). These new projects are conducted in an interdisciplinary team involving faculty and students from Chemical Engineering, Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Social Sciences.

 

Selected Equipment

• High-resolution inverted microscopes (2)
• CCD cameras with analog image processing and digital image acquisition (2)
• Optical trap ("Laser Tweezers")
• Isothermal titration microcalorimeter
• Optical hollow fiber laser-based cell guidance system
• Computer-controlled electrophysiology equipment
• Cell culture facilities
• Automated liquid chromatography
• Gas chromatograph (gas and liquid phase samples)
• Automated 5-L and 10-L fermenter systems
• Fluid-bed bioreactor system
• Phase contrast microscope
• Ion exchange chromatography system

Selected Theses/Dissertations

• Microtubule Dynamics in Cell Division, PhD dissertation, Y. Cao, in progress, 2001.
• Engineering Neural Networks with Defined Connectivity, PhD dissertation, J. Fass, in progress, 1999.
• Measurement/Modeling of the Kinetics of Bacterial Transport in Porous Media, PhD dissertation, P. Deshpande, in progress, 1998.
• Microbial Biomass Detection Using Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, MS thesis, J. Markey, 1996.
• Growth and Modeling of Acidothermus Celluloycus, MS thesis, R. Mandalam, 1989.