Project Overview

Project finished December 2016

The fate of individual microorganisms and populations is determined by their ability to maintain cellular homeostasis during challenges from the environment. There is a need for greater understanding of integrated cellular physiology to exploit cells and to tailor their activities to optimize microbial productivity in synthetic circuits and to limit microbial activity in foods and pharmaceutical products. Understanding the integration of the cellular metabolic processes is fundamental to developing and exploiting cells. Our international team of academic and industrial partners with multidisciplinary expertise in microbial physiology, chemistry, molecular biology and biophysics, advanced spectroscopy and microscopy, ab initio modeling, industrial system-led approaches and drug pharmokinetics, aims:

1. To generate deep insights into effects of perturbation of homeostasis on the core properties of the cell: transcription, translation, metabolism and protein activity;
2. To develop novel approaches to gauge the properties of individual cells and to model the behavior of single cells, cell collectives in biofilms and multicellular structures;
3. To develop new chemical and biophysical tools for the analysis of cells and protein complexes in order to understand cellular sub-structure assembly;
4. To map the location and dynamics of supramolecular assemblies in the cytoplasm and cell membranes;
5. To manipulate the productivity of the cell and engineer new, tailored activities in the cell for industrial needs.