The laboratory of mycology headed by Prof. Stéphane Declerck has been awarded an EU project (AMFactory: Engineering Bioreactor Mass Production of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi For European Farming) by the European Innovative Council PATHFINDER – the Europe's flagship innovation programme to identify, develop and scale up game changing innovations.
AMFactory proposes a next-generation production system of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi integrating synthetic biology, microbial engineering, and bioprocessing. The project will: (i) engineer roots with enhanced lipid biosynthesis and export for high yield biofortified AMF spore production; (ii) create microbial factories for scalable synthesis of symbiotic signalling molecules; (iii) optimize these components using root organ culture, microfluidic bioreactors, advanced imaging and automated analytics; and (iv) scale production in bioreactors that comply with EU safety and reproducibility standards.
The three-years project coordinated by UCLouvain brings together teams from Ghent University, Imperial College London, the University of Turin and the Max Planck Institute.