Civilisation is defined by our tools ������������������Stone Age, Bronze Age, and today, the Plastic Age. Although humanity benefits greatly from plastic, degradation in landfills can take up to 1,000 years, and in oceans plastics pose a threat to all life. Biodegradable alternatives are too expensive and without any additional benefits compared to petroleum-based plastics, preventing their widespread commercial use. A commercially viable, compostable food-packaging alternative must provide additional properties that justify a higher initial cost to the food processors. The SmartBioplastic program will deliver such a ground-breaking new food-packaging material in a first application study. At the end of the program, we will understand the fundamental processes of biology and material science to create and commercialise a novel SmartBioplastic prototype food-packing film that has been validated to compost naturally, and provide protection against infection with Campylobacter and Clostridium for a range of meat products, thereby extending product shelf-life and reducing a significant threat to our meat export markets. SmartBioplastics will create new market opportunities, revenue and international licensing streams estimated NZD $209M/p.a. for meat and seafood products alone and an environmental impact of NZD $480M/p.a. The research outcomes and technology developed will enable new spin-offs for SmartBioplastics into many new markets, such as agriculture and medical consumables and devices. Our multidisciplinary team unites eminent scientists in microbiology, bacterial fermentation, and polymer- and material sciences to leverage one of NZ������������������s key strengths, the primary sector, and uses innovation and challenging scientific hypotheses to bring NZ to the forefront of a green plastic revolution which will lead to an increase in export revenues and global leadership.

To advance the study of the nutrients limiting Agrobacterium tumefaciens growth and consistent biomass yields. The population will be initially culture using a medium formulation previously tested containing optimal complex nitrogen source. The goal of this proposed research is to enable the validation of the upstream high cell density process performance. The new environmental conditions will simulate Medicago process operations and the controlled microbial growth conditions will be performed in a 20 Liter reactor Biostat C equipped with sterilization in place (SIP).

The study of the interactions between the microorganism and its environment is usually recognized as microbial physiology. The surrounding environment and the behavior of microorganisms is dictated either by its ecological niche in nature or the conditions under which it is cultivated in the laboratory or in an industrial installation. As the occurrence of microbiological products are also the resultants of the interaction between the microorganisms and its environment, production and microbial physiology are closely related areas of study. Agrobacterium species are quite exigent regarding environmental and growth requirements. Therefore, media of increasing complexity will cause headaches during product separation and product recovery. Conversely the use of simpler formulations creates problems with biomass productivity, and hence cells stability. Therefore, for the control of growth compromises should be made during medium formulations leaving a small role to unknown growth factors present on limiting concentrations on the complex nitrogen sources.

North Carolina State University's Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center (BTEC) in Raleigh, NC proposes to provide a comprehensive biomanufacturing training program to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigators under the auspices of the FDA Office of Regulatory Affairs. The goal of the program is to enable investigators to expand the scope of their biopharmaceutical inspections. To accomplish this goal, industry-experienced BTEC staff will design, develop, and deliver a 4-course program covering a range of biopharmaceutical topics. This program will be offered every year for five years. These courses will include Web-based training, classroom instruction and hands-on laboratory experiences at BTEC.

Integration of biomass feedstock production, storage and conversion of on-farm has potential to minimize costs associated with the generation of biofuels. Crop cultivation, harvest, transporation and storage practices will be investigated for several grass species for suitablity of use in on-farm microbial conversion systems. Use of biomass residues from anaerobic solid state fermentation processing in gasification will be examined and functional use of produced syngas in the microbial conversion process will be determined.

North Carolina needs a source of sustainable, high yielding, readily convertible biomass to help advance biofuel production capabilities in the state. Sorghums can produce large quantities of biomass with relatively low agronomic inputs that contain high levels of directly fermentable sugars, as well as significant cellulose materialThe overall goal of this project is to document and evaluate industrial-scale production of sorghum-based ethanol from feedstock production and logistics to recovery of final product. Specific objectives will be to: 1) Assess the effectiveness and cost associated with several harvest and transportation strategies to deliver stable sorghum materials to the biorefinery; 2) Conduct industrial-scale production trials using locally produced sorghum to supply sugars for fermentation (~1000 gallon tanks) and biomass for distillation energy. 3) Complete economics and model development for field and biorefinery operations 4) Further examine our knowledge of C. beijerinckii SA-1/ATCC 35702 to produce butanol and ethanol on various mono, oligo and polysaccharides through use of sorghum juice.

Infectious diarrhea caused by a mere 5 pathogens is responsible for the death of millions of children, food animals and companion animals. The pathogen carrying the highest hazard of death is enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC). These studies involve an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers in CALS and researchers in the CVM to gather preliminary data that is expected to demonstrate that a marketable formulation of host commensal bacteria (E. hirae) can be used to prevent intestinal colonization and diarrhea caused by EPEC. These findings will have identified an innovative strategy for protection against a specific One Health cause of diarrheal death. These results will provide key preliminary data in support of grant submissions to the Gates Foundation, USDA, NIH, and companion animal health foundations. Our expected results will also be used to approach industry for partnership in marketing E hirae as a feline probiotic.

This project will identify and bring together NCSU faculty and staff, funding agency personnel, corporate partners, NGO and foundations personnel, and other partners to plan and develop a major new research initiative at NCSU. The focus of the initiative is a multi-faceted research program on advanced bio-processing of organic residuals. The fundamental idea is that almost all global agricultural production eventually falls into one of four residuals streams: plant residual, animal residual, food waste, and human residual. Most current systems treat these residuals as waste such they are treated and disposed of at considerable pecuniary and environmental cost. At best, low value products such as soil amendments are derived. Recent scientific developments, declining natural resources, and environmental concerns have created the opportunity to develop new processes that use organic residuals as feedstocks. NCSU has strengths in several key areas of science and engineering and several interested corporate and funding agency partners.

The overall goal of this project will be to document and evaluate industrial-scale production of sorghum-based ethanol from feedstock production and logistics to recovery of final product. The data collected, cost-analysis and carbon balance will provide a baseline for biomass processing and biorefinery operations to generate liquid fuels in NC. In addition, butanol fermentation as a "drop in" process will be established to support the need for ethanol alternatives.

This project intends to identify genomic differences between Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824 and a butanol-resistant derivative C. acetobutylicum ATCC 35702 (SA-1) developed by serial enrichment (Lin and Blaschek (6)). Comparative genomics will focus on elucidating potential butanol production prototypes by contrasting ATCC 824 and SA-1. The rationale behind our strain selection is based on studies showing that diverse phenotypic characteristics can be linked to different selection strategies. The strategy by Lin and Blaschek used to isolate ATCC 35702 emphasized butanol resistance. In fact, this mutant is able to grow in butanol concentrations as high as 1.5% (w/v), a concentration that significantly reduces the maximum specific growth rate of the parent strain. Note that butanol is toxic and since the production occurs mainly in the non-growing phase, industrial production requires the identification of regulators that permits growth and still able to carry on butanol production. Enhanced butanol tolerance may be caused by mutations in genes coding for solitary acting proteins or for master regulators that influence expression of numerous proteins anywhere in the butanol creation pathway. Identifying and genetically modifying specific genes effecting butanol tolerance found by sequencing makes more sense then randomly mutating genes that are shown to be up or down regulated by transcriptome analysis during butanol stress. Conversely, modifying genes identified by sequencing without analyzing their global impact by transcriptome analysis ignores the effects on numerous pathways that may alter butanol yield such as butanol tolerance, excess production of solvents other than butanol, altered nutritional requirements for the latest metabolic burden, and identification of genes that may act as global regulators.