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Researchers at the �����о���, have been awarded a $3 million National Science Foundation grant to develop new technologies and workforce training programs to grow plants in low-resource environments both on Earth and in space. 

Biomanufacturing — the industrial use of living organisms to produce biomolecules, biomaterials and cellular products — is a powerful technology to sustainably create a wide variety of products such as medicines, chemicals, recyclable polymers, enzymes, fuels, materials and foods. 

“In the United States, biomanufacturing has evolved to be highly complex, centralized in a few major geographic locations, and requires very expensive infrastructure, highly trained technical personnel and a complex global supply chain,” said , principal investigator and distinguished professor emerita in the Department of Chemical Engineering. “Biomanufacturing for low-resource environments does not exist today, whether it be in rural, underserved communities, a battlefield, or in space. We hope to demonstrate alternative plant-based production systems to meet this need.” 

The �����о��� team will develop and test the performance of a system in low Earth orbit on the International Space Station (ISS) in a severely resource constrained environment.

The Engineered Plants in Culture (EPiC) project will use engineered plant cells, plant embryos and fast-growing aquatic plants as novel bioproduction platforms, grown in simple contained systems such as bioreactors. These will utilize inexpensive, readily available growth media or, in some cases, only sunlight and carbon dioxide. 

The team will investigate three types of plant production platforms: transgenic rice cell suspension cultures, walnut embryo cultures and small, fast-growing aquatic duckweed plants. Results from these studies will advance knowledge not only in plant biomanufacturing but also in traditional microbial and animal cell culture biomanufacturing.

Addressing scientific challenges 

EPiC will address the fundamental challenges to implementing this technology by combining plant biology and bioprocess engineering. This is enabled by advances in rapid, low-cost gene sequencing, synthesis and precision editing.

In particular, EPiC will focus on bioproduction and processing efficiency, reducing cell line development time and costs while improving sustainability. The team will address these by engineering plant cell lines, recycling plant biomass waste and identifying plants’ DNA where new genes can be inserted.

EPiC will also develop novel bioreactors for different production hosts that can be 3D printed at low cost and implemented locally. The researchers will evaluate commercial viability by developing models for each platform. The project will also develop and implement educational and outreach activities that will attract and train students in this new field.

Project collaborators 

The EPiC project is led by McDonald, who described it as “a pinnacle” of her 40-year career at �����о���. Other team members of the project include: , distinguished professor in the Department of Plant Sciences; , professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; , adjunct faculty in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and , director of the �����о��� Biotechnology Program. 

Collaborators include a team from  led by Gavin D’Elia who will provide technical input into the design of ISS experiments and coordinate the launch activities, and the  (P4S) (Professor Matthew Gilliham, director, Centre of Excellence in P4S and associate professor Jenny Mortimer, Adelaide Node Leader for P4S) who will contribute to the educational and outreach components of the project.

“We are proud to partner on this initiative to investigate the effects of microgravity on plant-based pharmaceutical production,” said D’Elia, global head of pharma at Axiom Space. “This is how we leverage the strategic environment of space to unlock breakthroughs for benefit to life on and off our planet.”

About the NSF Future Manufacturing program

The �����о��� grant is part of a $25.5 million investment to support fundamental research and workforce development aimed at enabling future generations of U.S. manufacturing through the  (NSF FM) program.

The program focuses on areas such as biomanufacturing, cyber manufacturing and eco-manufacturing, with some efforts exploring intersections with quantum manufacturing. This year’s awards will support seven research grants and nine seed projects across 36 institutions and companies. The program emphasizes convergence by bringing together teams from multiple disciplines to create new and potentially transformative manufacturing capabilities, aimed to go far beyond the improvements possible by current manufacturing processes.