The research, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s (BBSRC) strategic Longer and Larger (sLoLa) grants programme , takes the first major step towards understanding complex microbial communities and will support the move towards a more sustainable and Net Zero future.
The University is one of four institutions to receive a share of £18 million from the BBSRC to support adventurous research aimed at tackling fundamental
"This grant allows us to take a major step towards understanding the complex microbial communities that impact numerous aspects of human life."
Lead researcher, Professor Sophie NProfessor Sophie Nixon, BBSRC David Phillips and Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellow at The University of Manchester Over five years, the researchers from The University of Manchester and the Earlham Institute will concentrate on low-diversity communities inhabiting geothermal springs, using a powerful combination of biochemical, ’omics, and synthetic biology approaches to uncover the rules that govern microbial life in communities.
Using a tractable model system, the team aim to engineer the microbial community both as a learning tool to test emerging hypotheses, such as the ways in which microbes depend on or hinder one another, and as a testbed for future biotechnological development.
Ultimately, the findings will facilitate the engineering of bespoke microbial communities to be used for a plethora of important applications, including new ways to bio-convert CO2 emissions into socio-economically beneficial compounds, contributing toward a more sustainable and Net Zero future.
Professor Guy Poppy, Interim Executive Chair at BBSRC, said: "The latest investment by BBSRC’s sLoLa award programme represents a pivotal step in advancing frontier bioscience research.
"These four world-class teams are poised to unravel the fundamental rules of life, employing interdisciplinary approaches to tackle bold challenges at the forefront of bioscience.
"By fostering collaboration and innovation, we aim to catalyse ground-breaking discoveries with far-reaching implications for agriculture, health, biotechnology, the green economy and beyond."
The University of Manchester’s research team includes seven researchers from the Faculty of Science and Engineering (five of which are based in the flagship Manchester Institute of Biotechnology), two from the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, and one from the Earlham Institute - a life science research institute based in Norwich.
