(Commentaire: il s'agit de la soumission ANR du projet SynBio-P soumis au PEPR B-Best)

SynLigno-Bio proposal seeks to develop an innovative approach to overcome the current limitations of CBP (Consolidated Bioprocessing) based on native anaerobic cellulolytic bacteria. The objective of SynLigno-Bio is to develop a biotechnological process to produce chemicals from lignocellulose by using synthetic consortia never-before described. The SynLigno-Bio proposal aims to design, construct, study the functionality, and optimize the performance of novel consortia that would convert lignocellulosic biomass into valuable products at high yield and in one step. Two molecules are the focus of the project: (1) Ethanol is commonly used as fuel, solvent, and as precursor of numerous chemicals in inks, paints, plastics, cosmetics, perfumes, pharmaceuticals ; and (2) lactic acid is a platform molecule with many applications in paints, adhesives or bioplastics (polylactic acids), as well as food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. The planned consortium associates a lignocellulose-degrading strain and a product-synthesizing strain, offering an ideal case to study microbial division of labour and symbiosis. The development of a stable and synergistic consortium represents a challenge that will be addressed by culture condition tuning, exametabolomic and proteomic analysis and genetic engineering, proteomic studies, culture condition tuning. This endeavour will be assisted by an original modelling approach, Resource Balance Analysis (RBA) [Goelzer et al, 2011; 2015] that is a genome-scale constraint-based method that accurately describes the allocation of resources in a growing bacterial population. The mathematical modelling of a bacterial consortium is a challenging task, and constitutes an original and engaging feature of the SynLigno-Bio.