Grant: Engage Grants Program

SabrTech is a company specialized in algal biomass production. Creators of the RiverBox, the first modular, scalable, and rapidly deployable biofilm platform, SabrTech enables on-site production of algae for a wide variety of sectors (aquaculture, nutraceutical, cosmetic and biofuel). To date, many fuels, pharmaceuticals and cosmetic products are extracted from plants. These valuable plant natural products (PNPs) are often produced in low quantities in plants and extraction methods can be long and expensive. Thus, there is much interest in synthetic biology for developing microbial platforms to produce specific PNPs. Microalgae are well-known systems for plant biology and genetic engineering and are interesting and suitable hosts for the reconstitution of complex plant pathways. SabrTech wishes to translate synthetic biology research into industrial processes. This synthetic biology project aims to develop a transformation protocol to create microalgae platforms for the production of valuable PNPs. These ventures are motivated by consumer demand for products that are environmentally friendly, less expensive, and possess properties similar or superior with those generated by PNPs.