Abstract
Dear Colleagues:
In this issue of IB we focus on very old and familiar friends of industrial biotechnology, fungi. This large group of eukaryotes is at the core of a spectrum of industrial biotechnology innovations ranging from being the source of many essential industrial enzymes that are core to global biorefinery initiatives to serving as important, transformative agents for many of the foods and beverages that we enjoy consuming, such as bread, wine, and cheese. Because of their abundance and diversity, fungi continue to comprise a significant family in which to go prospecting for novel antibiotics, solvents, amino acids, polymers, and other important industrial chemicals. Continued breakthroughs and technological developments in molecular biology and genetics are rapidly expanding the frontier of fungal biotechnology innovation and deployment.
To help us understand the opportunities to drive innovation in fungal biotechnology we offer this IB IN DEPTH issue led by Guest Editors Drs. Scott Baker, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Richland, WA), Antoine Margeot, Department of Applied Chemistry and Physical Chemistry, IFP Energies nouvelles (Rueil-Malmaison, France) and Adrian Tsang, Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics, Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). This international team of IB leaders have pulled together an outstanding set of review and original research articles that illustrates how scientific advances in fungal genetics, genomics, and molecular biology are expanding the reach of fungi into industrial biotechnology innovation. Fast and cheaper genomic sequencing is providing an unprecedented quantity of genetic information that must be curated, structured, and deployed to spur additional fungal biotechnology innovation. In this issue, we feature two review articles, McCluskey et al., and Ekwe et al., that provide us with a view of how the challenges of genomic information curation, structure, and deployment shape the landscape of fungal biotechnology research and development. These review articles provide the backdrop for the original research articles that explore the effect of acetic acid on the growth of Trichoderma reseei, by Jourdier et al., and the production of itaconic acid by Aspergillus terreus, by An et al. Our Guest Editors accomplished their goals of providing “a firm scientific foundation that ultimately is translated into biotechnological applications.” We at IB thank Drs. Baker, Margeot, and Tsang for developing and presenting this important issue on fungal biotechnology.
The White House's “National Bioeconomy Blueprint” called for the creation of shared R&D facilities that are accessible to government, academic, and industrial researchers as an important strategy for driving biotechnology innovation. This strategy is reflected in the creation of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) funded by the US Department of Energy. EMSL is a center of excellence designed to facilitate the scientific exploration of environmental microorganisms and their interactions with the abiotic and biotic landscape, and to help deploy the knowledge gained to address a number of important environmental and industrial biotechnology opportunities. Given that fungi are ubiquitous in terrestrial ecosystems, it is not surprising that this center is a focus of some exciting fungal biotechnology R&D. In developing this piece for IB, John Nicksich has sought to describe how the facility is organized to facilitate collaborations between different groups of researchers, and to provide illustrative examples of how EMSL is supporting these collaborations by providing comprehensive analytical techniques for metabolomics, proteomics, and bioprospecting. EMSL has assembled a set of research tools and scientists that is essential for advancing discoveries in fungal genetics, genomics, and molecular biology that will drive biotechnology innovation.
In this issue of IB, we continue in our mission to introduce our readers to our Editorial Board through our “Meet Our Editorial Board” feature. Three of our Editorial Board members are featured in this issue: Drs. Kelvin H. Lee, Brian H. Davidson, and David B. Wilson. Professor Lee is a member of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, University of Delaware, and Director of the Delaware Biotechnology Institute. He is a national leader in the development of next-generation tools for protein expression profiling, and he has had a successful career of deploying these tools for exploring a spectrum of biomolecular engineering and biotechnology problems. I can personally attest to his enjoyment in “pushing boundaries—specifically work in which we explore new technologies and apply them in novel and creative ways” based on our interactions at Cornell, where he was a professor, and in his current position. He also understands the challenges, and opportunities, for developing core facilities to support innovative multidisciplinary and multi-institutional research ecologies. Professor Art Ragauskas is a member of the Chemistry and Biochemistry faculty and a member of the Center for Biomaterials Education and Research at Georgia Tech. His research focus is on green chemistry of polymers, with a focus on deploying plant cell wall polymers for biotechnology development. He very much understands the importance of assessing biotechnology opportunities through green chemistry from a systems perspective, and he continues to be a champion for a systems integration approach for biorefineries. Given the role that fungi play in providing industrial enzymes for deconstructing plant material, it is very appropriate that we introduce Professor David Wilson in this issue of the journal, based on his long career focused on understanding the enzymology of cell-wall degrading enzymes. He is a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University where he has led a major protein engineering research program focused on using a combination of genomics, protein engineering, and molecular biology to expand our understanding of the molecular behavior of cell wall-degrading enzymes. David and I have been colleagues for over a quarter of a century and there is an active debate on who has had the most corruptive influence on the other. We at IB are thankful to be able to tap into the strong scientific capability and passion of these three individuals and all of the other members of our Editorial Board who champion industrial biotechnology development.
As always, we bring to you our “Industry Report” feature in this issue, and we have reached out to Kalib Kersh, an analyst at Lux Research, Boston, MA, to provide an accompanying Commentary. The report concludes that the biomass for bioenergy and biochemical sector will continue to soar, with a tripling of the biomass need by 2030. This is promising news given the continued policy and sponsored research uncertainty today. It is reassuring to see that there is still an industrial biotechnology market pull for biomass resources development. Also, we continue to provide news of the industry and development of important intellectual property as part of our mission.
Our goal remains to make IB a forum for the exchange of scientific discoveries and technological development for a broad group of stakeholders that are driving the global bioeconomy. We very much appreciate the support and encouragement that these stakeholders have provided to IB.