Building Synthetic Biofilm Consortia for Polyfluorinated Chemicals Biodegradation

University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

Microorganisms naturally occur in communities known as biofilms and natural biofilms are widely used for the treatment wastewater. For example, natural biofilms are used to remove nitrate from wastewater. The long-term goal of this project is to design biofilms that can efficiently degrade polyfluorinated substances (PFAS), a major group of water contaminants that have health and environmental implications. The successful completion of the project will benefit society by providing fundamental knowledge of biofilms and biodegradation of PFAS, and creating the framework for future applications in manufacturing, energy and medicine. Additional benefits to society will be achieved through public engagement, education and training the next generation of scientists. Biofilms are mixed-species consortia that create structured microenvironments with distributed tasks and functions that confer significant survival advantages compared to planktonic cells. Although natural biofilms are readily used for wastewater treatment such as denitrification, little is known about how to purposefully create synthetic biofilms. This project aims to identify the design principles and establish the knowledge base as a framework for the development and manufacturing of use-inspired biofilms as robust structures for a range of applications. It is proposed to design environmentally safe synthetic biofilm consortia that can be incorporated into a bioreactor system for the efficient biodegradation of model polyfluorinated compounds known as PFAS that accumulate in the environment and are of increasing health and environmental concern and regulatory focus. Specifically, this project will (1) learn to design and control the formation of a robust artificial biofilm consortia composed of two bacterial species for (2) the efficient degradation of PFAS compounds that will be implemented on an easy to configure and cost-effective biofilm carrier system for future bioreactor operations (3). Molecular mechanisms will be interrogated and identified with which to manipulate the composition and properties of biofilms composed of engineered bacteria that are not typically associated with each other. Targeting PFAS degradation will create new innovative biocatalytic activities for the degradation of hard to biodegrade moieties that are recalcitrant funnel points of heavily used commercial agrichemicals and pharmaceuticals that enter our waterways. Knowledge and systems generated in this project will enable the design of new living biofilm materials for potentially transformational biotechnology processes beyond bioremediation, such as for biomanufacturing, energy and biomedical applications and as functional and/or responsive coatings. Education and outreach activities will be developed to broaden STEM participation and educate the public about biotechnological approaches and the use of genetically engineered systems. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.