Dr Alexander Darlington - University of Warwick

Engineering biology offers sustainable routes to the manufacture of chemicals and new ‘smarter’ therapeutics. However, currently engineering cells is a time intensive and expensive process requiring multiple rounds of experimentation and redesign. A key cause of this is our difficulty in predicting the impact that new processes have on the cell’s natural physiology and how new engineered biological systems function across industrial scales and biomedically relevant time scales. Our research aims to tackle these roadblocks to industrialisation and application of new engineering biology technologies by developing computer aided design tools which take account of cellular and fermentation processes. We develop models which combine metabolism, gene expression, and microbial growth to understand multiple different dynamic constraints that emerge over the course of population growth during industrial production processes and how they impact the function of engineered gene circuits and pathways. We are working with academic and industrial partners to extend these modelling frameworks beyond the lab workhorse E. coli into industrially and biomedically relevant strains to optimise real-world bioprocesses. Within this framework we embed real-world industrially-relevant metabolic pathways or biomedical gene circuits and use mathematical techniques to identify key bottlenecks which limit their performance. Using this knowledge, we design control strategies which dynamically alter cellular growth and pathway/circuit performance to improve efficiency and yields. Our group works closely with experimental colleagues to validate model predictions in living cells and design and build the new design strategies we identify. We work with colleagues to solve engineering biology problems across a range of sectors including medicine, the chemicals industry, and environmental science.