VILLUM Experiment to Simon Dusséaux

Postdoc Simon Dusséaux from Sotirios Kampranis' group has been successful in his application to the Villum Foundation Experiment grants. VILLUM Experiment supports unorthodox ideas in their early phase.

The project is an elegant but ambitious effort to construct a synthetic modular co-culture system between an autotrophic (cyanobacteria) and a heterotrophic (yeast) organism and its successful implementation could have a huge impact in biotechnology. For example, the Mars solution proposed by iGEM team Cosmocrops last year is just one of the many applications of this broader concept. Both Kampranis and Prof. Poul Erik Jensen, head of Copenhagen Plant Science Center, would be very happy to provide all the support and guidance needed for Simon to develop this expertise.

Project description:
Harvesting light to convert carbon dioxide into green materials using a unique two-species adaptive evolution approach

This project will investigate the long lasting problem of microbial photosynthetic production of green chemicals by developing, in an unprecedented manner, a synthetic autotroph-heterotroph consortium. A unique continuous culture reactor will be designed and used to perform adaptive evolution on both the autotroph and the heterotroph partners simultaneously to build a strong mutualistic relationship between the two. As a result, a powerful modular co-culture system will be developed to provide efficient light-driven production of a large panel of chemicals.