SBIR Phase I: Developing new bacterial hosts for productive secretion of difficult-to-express proteins by precision fermentation

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to develop more cost-effective ways to produce proteins. By engineering improved bacterial strains to manufacture proteins like those found in detergents, personal care products and dairy, better products can be made with a lower environmental impact. Enzymes in detergents remove the need for petrochemical-based ingredients, proteins found in shampoos improve their quality also replacing chemical ingredients, and the direct production of dairy proteins by fermentation will reduce the carbon footprint of the food industry and our overreliance on industrial agriculture.

This production of proteins by bacterial fermentation has gained significant market traction and momentum and it is expected to continue to grow at a CAGR of 44%, attaining an expected market size of $36B in 2030.

The proposed project aims to identify superior bacterial protein production hosts and to develop the genetic tools and methodologies that will allow these bacterial hosts to be converted into efficient protein factories. It is an outstanding problem in the field of precision fermentation of proteins that yield, titers, and productivity are often much lower than would be necessary for the successful commercialization of many highly desired categories of protein.

Identifying additional protein production strains will help to alleviate this industry challenge, allowing for the manufacture of more varied protein targets at competitive economics. The superior production hosts developed in this work will be fully characterized and matched to proteins for which they are well-suited production hosts. The advanced genetic engineering tools pioneered in this work will be later used to modify these bacteria to maximize their potential for producing proteins relevant to the dairy and personal care industries.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.