Aline Miller, Professor of Biomolecular Engineering and Associate Dean of Business Engagement at The University of Manchester, explains how biotechnology can make the energy, manufacturing, and medical industries more sustainable.
Given how inconceivably complex they are, the efficiency of most biological systems is astounding. From growth, healing, and multiplication to breakdown, digestion, and decay, nature tends to have a solution to everything. It therefore makes sense, when looking to find more sustainable ways to make everyday products, for us to try and emulate nature wherever we can. This is what industrial biotechnology is doing.
Our economy’s heavy reliance on petrochemicals for everything including energy, plastics, dyes, health products, and medications is harming our planet. Both extraction and disposal lead to dire consequences, with mining resulting in environmental destruction, and waste products polluting the natural world, unable to biodegrade and remaining highly toxic to flora, fauna, and humans, years after they enter the ecosystem.
To address this, we have to rethink and transform the traditions that have defined industries across the world for centuries. At The University of Manchester, we sit at the intersecting paths of science, industry, and education. This gives us a potential solution — a consortium of businesses, government bodies, and higher education institutions, catalysing action for one mission: to use the power of nature to break the UK’s addiction to fossil fuels.
Industrial biotechnology
Industrial biotechnology uses nature’s own mechanisms to develop everyday products, without relying on conventional petrochemical-based feedstocks. Instead, bio-based feedstocks and even anthropogenic waste can be used to fuel the bioprocesses that result in sustainable chemical alternatives, which are manufactured with 100% efficiency.
Leveraging a synthesis platform and bioreactor, industrial biotechnology can engage an advanced biotechnological technique: directed evolution. This technology is used to rapidly evolve enzymes with specific and desirable characteristics that are put to use in industrial processes, generating the materials and chemicals society needs. Directed evolution can also be combined with advanced AI algorithms to rapidly screen and optimise the enzymatic candidates, accelerating the transition from experimental to operational.
With directed evolution in our toolbox, enzymes can be made that can reconfigure plant cellulose into biodegradable plastics, offering a sustainable alternative to the petrochemical-based plastics that are a pervasive source of pollution. Similarly, we can make fewer toxic dyes, surfactants, and detergents, and find ways to consume and transform harmful waste from heavy industries.
Furthermore, industrial biotechnology itself can lead directly to the production of cleaner energy sources, such as bioethanol from the fermentation of food waste. Similarly, there is the process of anaerobic digestion, where food waste is broken down by enzymes to release biogas.
In the medical industry, industrial biotechnology processes can increase the production of active molecules, create new cell therapies and increase the rate of successful biotherapeutic delivery. Self-assembling versions of biological materials that mimic human extracellular matrices can be made and used to accelerate drug discovery in vitro, obtaining more physiologically relevant results while reducing reliance on cruel animal testing.
The Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Catalyst
But while these technologies offer huge promise, the journey from lab to life faces practical and legislative barriers that slow their application. To translate this research into practical solutions, and then fast-track them into industrial applications, businesses and start-ups need a platform where they can collaborate with higher education and government and vice versa.
To address this, at The University of Manchester, we’ve just launched the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Catalyst (IBIC) to create that cooperative ecosystem. It will boost job creation, innovation, collaboration, and investment, supporting the chemical industry in the north-west of England. We’re matchmaking leading academics with local businesses and policymakers, striving to increase funding opportunities and positive awareness of biotechnology’s potential.
Overcoming scaling and policy challenges
The IBIC is a first step towards tackling scaling these technologies and overcoming the substantial logistical and material challenges. But advocating for policy changes also plays a critical role; government incentives for companies adopting biotechnologies or imposing levies on those relying on unsustainable practices could help drive widespread adoption.
But all of this pales if public trust and acceptance is missing. Addressing misconceptions and educating through schools and media about the benefits and safety of biotechnologies will be essential. Demonstrating how it can directly replace more harmful practices without compromising quality, safety or convenience will help bolster consumer confidence.
So, biotechnology allows us to use what nature has already given us to improve life on Earth and meet essential human needs like access to good food, medicine, and clean energy. The IBIC exemplifies the necessity of integrating innovation, application and policy. By demonstrating the economic and environmental benefits, we aim to inspire a generation to embrace the “bio-” prefix. The future of industry is biology; and in an increasingly sustainability-conscious world, the future of biology will be industry.