One third of all food produced is lost or wasted around 1.3 billion tonnes of food costing the global economy close to $940 billion each year.

70% of the 7.6 million tonnes of food wasted in Australia every year is edible. Australian households throw away around one in five bags of groceries, equaling around 312kg per person.

All of this waste contains
SUGARS!

Bacteria can consume sugars in biomass and convert them into useful products. However,

There is a problem.

When Bacteria is in the presence of glucose, they tend to consume smaller quantities of xylose, the second most abundant sugar resource in biomass.

As large amounts of Xylose and energy is under-utilised and wasted on a daily basis, we often fail to recognise Xylose’s potential as a source of energy.

Through synthetic biology, SweetGenes aims to boost E.Coli’s efficiency by making it favour Xylose as much as glucose.

How do we do this?

By implementing different pathways for xylose metabolism from yeast bacteria into E. coli, it will facilitate and promote E.coli growth. By harnessing these pathways, the E. coli will be able to achieve more efficient consumption of xylose as well as glucose.

Our vision

We envision our project contributing to the enhancement of E. coli as a building block for broader uses across the field of synthetic biology to make new products.

For example, our engineered xylose utilising E. coli strain can be used to optimise the production of sustainable energy from biomass waste sources - improving the conversion of sugars present within lignocellulose to make sustainable products such as clean hydrogen.

Maximising the utilisation of Xylose can simultaneously minimise agricultural waste and take advantage of an abundant energy source that has been previously ignored to

Power our bioeconomy!