Bioport Ugent

industrial biotechnology relies on nature’s toolset and converts bacteria, yeast, and fungi into microbial cell factories to generate value-added products such as biological detergents, chemical building blocks, food additives, pharmaceuticals, and biofuels. in the past decades, themes such as synthetic biology and metabolic engineering gained momentum and were also introduced in industrial biotechnology, opening doors for the synthesis of compounds non-natural to the host. yet, here some limitations are met; in many cases, problems are encountered to get the compound out of the cell resulting in toxic effects, low yields and additional processing costs. to intensify industrial biotechnological processes, it’s important to understand and exploit the mechanisms of transport into and out of cells. this is where the bioport team of prof. van bogaert is focusing on. most known biosurfactants are glycolipids. they are carbohydrates in combination with long-chain aliphatic acids or hydro