Plastics, medicines, cosmetics – there are very few everyday products that do not rely on using fossil resources. A European research team led by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin is now aiming to revolutionize this cornerstone of the chemical industry: as part of the CarboNcare project, scientists are developing bacteria that can produce important chemical base materials from sustainable methanol – thereby replacing fossil resources. The project is funded by a €3.1 million Pathfinder Grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC), which specifically supports groundbreaking innovations with high market potential.
The chemical industry continues to be heavily dependent on finite resources such as crude oil, natural gas, and coal. Many alternative approaches rely on sugar and biomass, but growing these requires valuable land and competes with food production. “Our goal is to decouple chemical production from both fossil and plant-based resources,” says Dr. Steffen Lindner-Mehlich, scientist at the Institute of Biochemistry at Charité and head of the CarboNcare project, which is now underway. “Our aim is to make the chemical industry more sustainable, without jeopardizing food security. In order to achieve this, we’re pulling every trick in the biotechnology playbook.”
The researchers’ aim is to enable a CO 2 circular economy: in other words, using the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere – for example, when a plastic product is incinerated at the end of its life cycle – as a base material for producing that very same product. In an ideal scenario, this would create a closed carbon cycle without any additional emissions. The first step on this path is already within reach today: Methanol – a key base material in the chemical industry – can already be made from CO₂ captured from the atmosphere.
Bacterial factories are intended to produce lactate, succinate, and butanediol
The scientists in the CarboNcare project are now focusing on the second step, namely converting methanol into important intermediates such as lactate, succinate, and 2,3-butanediol. The industry harnesses these intermediates to produce medicines (e.g., tablet coatings), food (e.g., preservatives and flavor enhancers), bioplastics, cosmetics (e.g., lipsticks, creams), and rubber for tire production. The project aims to engineer bacteria to carry out this methanol conversion — effectively creating tiny biological factories. “We are genetically reprogramming both of the bacterial strains already at work in the industrial arena – Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas putida – in such a way that they “feed on” methanol and excrete lactate, succinate, or butanediol,” explains Steffen Lindner-Mehlich.
That is easier said than done, however, as the energy that bacteria obtain from feeding would usually mainly be used to support their own growth, rather than producing chemical products. “That is why we link bacterial growth directly to the production of the desired chemicals,” adds the project lead. “In this way, if the bacteria want to grow, they need to produce the target molecule at the same time. This approach not only increases the yield, but also makes the process more robust and predictable, which is a decisive factor for industrial use.”
Optimization for industrial use
In order to comprehensively reconfigure the bacteria's metabolic pathways, the project team plans to initially simulate the biochemical processes on a computer before making the necessary modifications to the bacterial organisms. “Alongside molecular biology, we are also keeping industrial scalability in mind,” stresses Steffen Lindner-Mehlich. The fermentation process will therefore be designed so that it can operate reliably on an industrial scale later down the line, and it will also be analyzed with regard to its environmental footprint and economic viability. The interdisciplinary expertise required to achieve this brings together eight European partners from science and industry within the CarboNcare project.
“We want to develop a seriously viable and sustainable alternative to the established production methods in the chemical industry,” emphasizes Steffen Lindner-Mehlich. “So that plastics, cosmetics, and other everyday products can be manufactured in a climate-neutral manner in the future.” The demand for basic chemicals shows just how great the potential of this approach could be: the global lactate market alone totaled around €2.9 billion in 2021 and continues to grow.
About CarboNcare
The CarboNcare project aims to develop a new platform for the climate-neutral production of basic chemicals. It is funded by an EIC Pathfinder Grant and coordinated by Dr. Steffen Lindner-Mehlich (Charité). Additional partners in the consortium are the Max Planck Society and DECHEMA Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (Germany), Leiden University (Netherlands), the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission – CEA (France), the Technical University of Denmark – DTU (Denmark), IN SRL (Italy), and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland – HES-SO (Switzerland).
EIC Pathfinder Grants
Through its Pathfinder Grants, the European Innovation Council (EIC) supports radically new technologies that have the potential to create new markets. To this end, funding is provided to visionary and high-risk projects in an early stage of development. EIC Pathfinder Grants are part of Horizon Europe, the EU’s key funding program for research and innovation.