research project "Multi-Digestome Overclocker"

Approaches to overclock anaerobic microbiomes

Project Description:

"Digestome" is derived from the English words "microbiome" and "digester". Digestome thus refers to the totality of all microorganisms in a fermenter. The word "overclocker" is used in English to refer to the overclocking of computer systems, and in the project presented here it can be seen as a metaphor for increasing the efficiency of microbial systems in biogas plants. In this sense, the title thus expresses the desire to overclock anaerobic microbiomes.

However, the project is not only concerned with anaerobic methane production. Rather, the focus is on a multi-stage plant system with a broader product spectrum that includes hydrogen and succinic acid. As a metaphor for this, the word "MultiDigestome" was used in the headline.

Various subprojects are united under this heading, with the TU-Dresden's main focus within the project framework being on the possibility of microbiome manipulation based on bioinformatic population analyses. A key question here is how selected microorganisms can be stabilized in a complex microbiome. Hundreds of different species can be identified in a typical biogas reactor. Introducing target organisms into such a complex system is a major challenge for scientists. This is because foreign introduced microorganisms often cannot prevail against the multitude of other species in a microbiome.