Understanding yeasts and lactic acid bacteria interactions to develop a mixed culture bioprocess for the production of ethanol from food waste

The EU Commissions bioeconomy strategy aims at shifting the European economy towards a greater and more sustainable use of renewable resources, where waste streams are converted into value-added products. Ethanol is a platform chemical and fuel with a global production of 102 billion liters per year.

However, its production requires sugar crops, leading to conflicts over land use and potentially contributing to food shortages or increased food prices.

Current feedstock alternatives (lignocellulosic materials or algae biomass) require complex pre-treatments, resulting in higher production costs that limit their application.

Waste2Ethanol aims to develop a novel non-sterile bioprocess without any pretreatments for the production of ethanol from food waste.

For this, our understanding of the metabolic interactions between yeasts (ethanol producers) and carbohydrate fermenting bacteria needs to be expanded.

In Waste2Ethanol, this will be done with a combination of mixed culture biotechnology methods, defined microbial co-cultures and cutting-edge molecular and microscopy techniques.

Hosted at UGent, I will study the competition and synergies of yeasts and carbohydrate fermenting bacteria with microbial enrichment cultures and bioinformatics techniques to identify selective conditions that would favor the production of ethanol.

During the secondment at Osnabrck University, I will gain complementary skills in the use of defined microbial co-cultures and advanced microscopy techniques to study metabolic interactions.

This unique combination of expertise will significantly improve my career perspectives towards my ambition to establish my own research group at the intersection of microbial ecology and non-axenic biotechnology.

Overall, the generated knowledge will allow to steer a microbial community towards ethanol production and pave the road to a non-sterile bioprocess for the production of ethanol from food waste at higher TRLs.