Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Fully automated parallel bioreactor systems with control and supervision of multiple bioreactors in parallel allows high throughput bioprocessing while its integration with external sensors and metabolite analyzers enables in-line qualitative and quantitative analyses of bioprocesses. Bioengineered technologies in diverse fields such as industrial microbiology, environmental science, biochemistry and structural biology, geoenvironmental engineering etc. are critically dependent on efficient, high functioning microbes which can catalyse specific biochemical reactions at optimal rates under optimized reaction conditions. This requires extensive experimentation to achieve optimal microbe design, substrate preparation and reaction conditions (medium design) and process development to a technical scale (process design). Parallel bioreactor systems enable a rapid, scalable and parallel optimization of these three designs, thereby providing an integrated process development and facilitating a decrease in developmental timelines, reduction in overall cost and increase in experimental efficiency. Integration with smart sensors and metabolite analyzers provides the opportunity for microbial culture and process monitoring in a real-time manner which leads to a deeper process understanding for robustness and scalability. This in-line monitoring and control functionality will allow robust development of fed-batch and continuous designs which is a norm in industrial bioprocessing, thereby enabling a faster process scale-up. In addition, such advanced analytics can also be beneficial to unravel novel metabolic pathways under a parallel testing approach. These will pave the way for novel microbial processes and biocatalytic methods to boost the Canadian bio-based economy via production of bio-based products; and developing newer, greener technologies for environmental, geotechnical and soil science applications. Further, 7 key researchers and at least 5 collaborators at York University will be using the system on an intense frequency basis, training at least 15 HQP per year, validating the need and urgency of the fully automated bioreactor system.