SBIR-STTR Award

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is the development of yeast fermentation technologies that enable conversion of sugars abundant in pectin-rich agricultural waste into useful specialty chemicals. The U.S. is a leading producer of pectin-rich agricultural wastes including citrus peels (>5 million tons annually), sugar beets (>37 million tons annually), and grape pomace (>1 million tons annually). These peel and pulp byproducts lack value, however, the proposed technologies developed in this project will allow for significantly higher valued products to be produced from these waste streams. The initial target chemical product is used as a chelator in cleaning products and a precursor to plastics. Other chemical products potentially may be produced using this platform. Implementation of this fermentation process offers a lower carbon footprint and emissions compared to petroleum or even other sugar-derived products, and has impact in reducing waste and combating climate change. When implemented at scale, these fermentation processing plants will be co-located with rural agricultural processing plants, adding high-tech jobs in these areas, and offering a means to de-risk historically volatile crop harvests by accessing alternative markets. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to engineer yeast strains capable of converting sugars in pectin-rich agricultural wastes into valuable specialty chemicals. Currently, the fermentation rates for utilizing the primary sugar in pectin, D-galacturonic acid, limits production of these chemicals, including the proposed first product, which is a biodegradable metal chelator. Previous characterization has identified that uptake of the pectin sugars by a transporter as the limiting step. Accordingly, the first objective of this proposal is to characterize this class of transporter to identify new transporters with improved rates. The second objective is to improve the best transporter through protein engineering. Using this improved transporter, the final objective will assess the cellular energy requirements for the fermentation process using bioreactors to control fermenter conditions, as product synthesis and transport is energy-demanding. If successful, this project will enable production of specialty chemicals from pectin-rich agricultural waste. 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.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is enabling commercialization of novel technologies that convert pectin-rich agricultural byproducts into useful specialty chemicals for existing multi-billion dollar chemical markets. The United States is a leading producer of pectin-rich byproducts, including the citrus (>5 million tons annually), apple (>5 million tons annually) and sugar beet (>37 million tons annually) industries. With this platform fermentation technology, it is possible to perform specific chemical conversion of these US byproducts into value-adding products. Implementation of this technology can increase overall revenue from crops far exceeding current byproduct mitigation strategies. This offers reduced volatility in crop value, financial sustainability for farmers, and construction of rural fermentation facilities. Furthermore, by using existing crop byproducts and eco-friendly fermentations, the resulting chemical products will be have lower environmental impact than competing chemicals made from petroleum or sugar. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is designed to improve the conversion of industrial pectin-rich agricultural byproducts into specialty chemical products. Each year, large volumes of agricultural byproducts, such as citrus peels and sugar beet pulp are produced, but lack value-adding technologies. By using novel scientific breakthroughs in microbial metabolism and tools for strain engineering, microbial organisms can be engineered to convert the sugars from these byproducts into useful chemicals through environmentally sustainable fermentation. The goal of this Phase II project is to improve the production rate for the synthesis of the first chemical product using this technology. The first objective is to improve the oxidative metabolism of the host organism to aid in strain productivity. The second objective is to use a combinatorial library of strains to refine and optimize the microorganisms' fermentation rate. The final objective is to take the improved strains and optimize the fermentation conditions using bioreactors. This three pronged-approach promises to improve chemical production rates.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.