The Department of Biotechnology at SINTEF Materials and Chemistry has for more than 20 years worked with development of microbial bioprocesses, both contract based research for Norwegian and international industry and basic research funded by The Research Council in Norway and EU. Our closest academic collaborator is the Department of Biotechnology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). We have state of the art equipment for bioprocess development including facilities for:

• Robotic high throughput screening
• Laboratory and pilot scale fermentation (44 fermentors with working volume from 0.2 to 1000-L
• Advanced analyses (15 Mass spectrometry instruments)
• Laboratory for anaerobic cultivation of microorganisms
  

Core competence:

• Strain development by classical mutagenesis and high throughput screening
• Strain development by molecular biology and metabolic engineering
• Development of highly efficient vectors for heterologous expression of proteins in bacteria and yeast
• Optimization of culture media and conditions for cost effective production of biomolecules in fermentor
  

Emerging technologies
We aim to incorporate new emerging technologies in bioprocess development. In collaboration with national and international partners we are currently involved in several projects where focus is on the use of omics-analyses, synthetic- and systems biology to understand and develop microbial production processes.

Main research areas

• Streptomyces antibiotics
• Microbial production of amino acids (lysine and glutamic acid) from methanol
• Recombinant protein production in E. coli and yeast
• Microbial production of carotenoides
• Microbial production of alginate
• Microbial production of vaccines
  

Examples of ongoing projects

• Contract research project for several industrial companies (antibiotics, biopolymers, recombinant protein production, carotenoides, 2nd generation biofuel)
• Biopolymer Engineering (Research Council project nr: 182695)
• New strategies for efficient development of microbial bioprocesses (Research Council project nr: 182662)
• A Combinatorial Mutagenesis Approach to Improve Microbial Expression Systems (Research Council project nr: 182672)
• Development of versatile bacterial expression systems for use in recombinant protein production, metabolic engineering, and systems biology (Research Council project nr: 192432)
• Understanding and improving microbial production of L-glutamate from methanol by Bacillus methanolicus (Research Council project nr: 182545)
• SysMO: Global metabolic switching in Streptomyces coelicolor (Research Council project nr: 182902)
• SysMO: Systems Biology of a genetically engineered Pseudomonas fluorescens with inducible exo-polysaccharide production (Research Council project nr: 182898)
• EUROCORE (EuroSYNBIO): Genome-based analysis of C1 metabolism in bacilli and redesign of Bacillus subtilis into a methylotroph

Recent relevant publications (.pdf)