ERC's Research Goals Sample Clauses
ERC's Research Goals. Thrust 1 - Optical Communication Systems and Networks: Thrust 1 will demonstrate novel transformative network functionalities and infrastructure using cost-effective integrated subsystems. It will act as the top-down driver for new paradigms in subsystem integration and device performance under Thrusts 2 and 3 to realize a robust, secure and dynamically reconfigurable physical layer for developing the envisioned network platform. It includes exploratory fundamental research on network approaches that can extract significant performance gains by
ERC's Research Goals. Thrust 1 - New Biocatalysts for Pathway Engineering: CBiRC will generate a flexible platform for the production of commodity chemical intermediates from biological precursors. That is: CBiRC will develop technologies for generating a series of biologically derived chemicals that will represent a new precursor landscape for producing commodity molecules or final chemical products. This landscape will be established via a new paradigm in combinatorial metabolism based on biocatalysts identified and characterized by Thrust 1 of the CBiRC. These biocatalysts will be accessed from a wide variety of organisms that harbor different polyketide/fatty acid biosynthetic pathways. These metabolic processes offer flexible biochemical conversions that can reiteratively generate a homologous series of alkyl-chains, which carry different chemical functionalities at specific positions of the molecules. Theoretically, these metabolic processes can generate alkyl-chains that range from 3- carbons to 18-carbon atoms; however, the initial focus will be on molecules that are of up to 10- carbon atoms. It is important to note that the focus of the work is not the synthesis of complex polyketides, but using the biocatalytic machinery of the polyketide/fatty acid pathways to produce smaller molecules.
Thrust 2 - Microbial Metabolic Engineering: While the discovery of new pathways for the synthesis of small molecules with novel structures is a critical first step, significant effort is still required to develop efficient microbial strains in order to produce these molecules in an economically viable manner. The focus of the microbial metabolic engineering thrust is thus to develop microbial platforms using a systems approach to produce small polyketide based molecules by incorporating new synthesis pathways discovered from Thrust 1 at high yields, high rates and high product titers. Specifically, the microbial production platforms will have the following properties:
(i) Integration of new pathways into the production platforms
(ii) Efficient pathway design to allow proper balance between cell growth and product formation
(iii) Balanced carbon and cofactor flow
(iv) Maintenance of robust performance even at high product titers
(v) Robust cell growth, and address scale-up issues with industrial input Thrust 3 - Chemical Catalyst Design: Catalytic reactions are typically controlled by chemical processes that take place at various length scales. Moreover, complex couplings can take pla...