Biopolymers

The main work in this field at present is on the polysaccharide alginate, which has several commercial applications. Due to its gelling, water-binding, and viscosity-enhancing properties alginate is widely used in foods, and has other industrial applications as different as in textile printing and welding rods.

Biosyntesis of L-Lysin from Methanol

This project was initiated in 2001 in colaboration with SINTEF Applied Biotechnology and the BioTechnology Institute at the University of Minnesota. L-Lysine is an essential amino acid widely used as an additive in food and feed, and the global L-Lysine market is large and growing. Today, commercial L-Lysine production is made fermentative by
using bacteria growing on sugars as carbon and energy source.

Engineered antibiotic synthesis

Antibiotics represent a group of the industrially important compounds used for the treatment of human and animal infectious diseases. With the rapid evolution of the multi-resistant pathogens the need for new antibiotics is growing. Among the several thousand of different antibiotics discovered so far, more than two thirds are produced by bacteria.
Gene Expression

Development of tools for different aspects of protein expression is a very central field within biotechnology. In our group we have been working with development of broad-host-range plasmids for high and low regulated gene expression leves in many different bacterial species.

Metabolic Engineering

Metabolic engineering is a purposeful modification of intermediary metabolism using recombinant DNA technology, and is aimed at using microrganisms for industrial production prosesses. One of the major challenges when optimizing bacteria for industrial purposes is to identify enzymes controlling metabolic bottlenecks leading to the synthesis of the desired metabolite.

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