SBIR-STTR Award

Growing restrictions on antibiotics and other growth promoters in the livestock industry has left an acute need for alternative supplements to enhance animal growth and prevent infection. NorthStar Microbes aims to address these issues by using synthetic biology to develop a probiotic cell factory to produce and deliver performance supplements to livestock. Engineered probiotics represent an innovative approach with several advantages to traditional chemical or fermentative synthesis methods. By employing a probiotic cell factory the supplement is produced in situ eliminating product loss during purification and processing and overcoming the biggest problem associated with fermentation processes - inability to reach economically viable titer and rate. Furthermore insitu production allows for delivery of less stable supplements not suitable for traditional oral delivery. The objective of this proposal is combine state-of-the-art developments in synthetic biology to develop E. coli Nissle (EcN) a probiotic with proven gut health benefits as a chassis to deliver high-performance supplements directly in the gut. These improvements include (i) developing a suite of promoter systems that provide desired expression in the intestinal tract (ii) incorporating a basic metabolic structure that is conducive to high level product formation and (iii)incorporating a self-destruction switch triggered outside the GI tract as a biocontainment measure. Each of these improvements are structured as independent objectives to allow advancing the tools in parallel. Successful completion will provide a chassis for the production of a supplements across a variety of species. This project is directly in line with USDA SBIR priorities to develop new technologies to increase the competitiveness of agriculturally derived products.