Research Group Plant- and Algaebiotechno­logy

Background:

Due to the global challenges, i.e. the depletability of fossil resources, the demographic change, the increasing world population and limited availability of agricultural land, biotechnological processes are getting into the focus of research and development. Cellular factories for the production of target products for food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, respectively, offer numerous advantages compared to the conventional technologies.

Plant in-vitro cultures and algae show a great variety of valuable cellular ingredients and are of growing industrial interest for the production of renewable energies, platform chemicals or pharmaceutical drugs. Conventional production of many target products based on chemical synthesis or extraction from plant materials has several drawbacks. First, in most cases chemical processes are dependent on fossil raw materials and can produce a variety of by-products which have to be separated from the target product. In addition, only few chemically synthesized compounds show the naturally occurring bioactivity.                                                                                                                               Second, the cropland used for the cultivation of medical plants is in competition to food crops. Moreover, the product quality and quantity at outdoor conditions is highly dependent on several biotic and abiotic factors. However, in-vitro biotechnological processes using plant cell cultures or algae enable a GMP-compliant and continuous production at optimized process conditions and with a constant product quantity and quality.     

Plant- and Algaebiotechnology

Algae- and plant biotechnology - research:

The main focus of research is focused on the development of processes for the sustainable and ecological production of pharmacological active substances using micro- and macroalgae, plant in-vitro cultures and hairy roots. Besides comprehensive knowledge in screening of suitable cell lines and their induction the main expertise are:

• Analytics of naturally occurring substances (HPLC, GC, GC/MS)
• (Photo-) bioreactor design (scale-up and scale-down)
• Online monitoring of heterogeneous biotechnological systems (e. g. respiration activity, laser optical sensor technology)
• Process optimization (process control, elicitation)
• Downstream processing
• Green Bioprinting
• Flow cytometry

Projects of the Plant- and Algaebiotechnology research group:

• The simulation of radiation fields in algal suspensions for horizontal tubular reactor systems

• Application of additive manufacturing technologies for the realization of clinically relevant cocultures of mammalian cells and microalgae

• MOProAlgae: Rapid monitoring system Rapid monitoring system to optimize process control for the production of valuable active substances with microalgae

• Algae4Cycle - Modular on-site plant for alga-based processing of industrial process water

• Model-driven continuous cultivation of the cyanobacterium Arthrospira platensis on a technical scale

• Green Bioprinting - Novel Environment for Agglomeration of Plant Cells
• MIPHO - Multispectral bioreactor for phototrophic organisms
• BioSpeckle: Development of a non-invasive sensor for determination of biomass in biotechnological processes by Laser-Speckle-Photometry
• Novel production system for plant secondary metabolites on the basis of cell-free biocatalysis in a cascaded, compartmentalized bioreactor for hairy roots

  Research projects  Chair of Bioprocess engineering

Research group head:

© Mann

Scientist

Name

PD Dr.-Ing. habil. Juliane Steingroewer

Head of Plant- and Algaebiotechnology

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