Description
The current landscape of environmental problems (climate change and resource scarcity) calls for optimisation of existing processes and careful planning of new ones under development. These actions share common points such as the reduction of energy consumption or any waste and generally more environmentally friendly processes. One of the strategies that can be implemented most quickly is precisely the reuse of any materials generated during industrial production. This idea is based on the fact that by-products still contain valuable molecules and, if provided that the recovery processes are energetically and economically viable, they represent a great opportunity in the food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals sectors. All this becomes especially relevant in those processes where synthetic biology is involved, since in this case we are talking about biomolecules.The Biomolecule Innovation Lab is one of the three laboratories of the CBQF thematic research group "Fermentation Solutions". Research activities focus on understanding and unleashing the potential of different sustainable biomolecules produced by fermentative processes, with the aim of creating new products and business opportunities in the fields of cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, nutrition and biomedicine. Dedicated to a multidisciplinary approach, the team members have extensive experience in the fields of molecular biology, in vitro models, microbiology, biochemistry and in the most recent branch of omics sciences, lipidomics.
The study of lipids and their role in biological processes has witnessed a radical shift in the way we understand these compounds: from molecules for biochemical energy storage, we have come to realise their relationship in cellular processes where they have functions on the same level as proteins. This has led to an exponential increase in the search for new sources of lipids with bioactive and functional capacity over the last 25 years thanks to the recent advances in analytics and high-resolution mass spectrometry.
Period | 25 Mar 2022 |
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Event title | Biotalk |
Event type | Seminar |
Organiser | Faculty of Biotechnology |
Location | Porto, PortugalShow on map |
Keywords
- Lipidomics
- Circular economy