Biological systems can produce useful compounds and materials from sustainable carbon sources. Bio-based industries can be a sustainable alternative to conventional, unsustainable industries that rely on petroleum, a non-renewable resource.

And as you already know, the use of petroleum exacerbates climate change by releasing carbon buried in the ground into the atmosphere. A new paradigm of industry independent of petroleum is awaited to establish a sustainable world.

Indeed, many researchers around the world have long focused on developing microbial technologies to produce the building blocks of the conventional petrochemical industry in a renewable way. However, the production of these building blocks from renewable biomass has not been effective so far. This is because these building blocks were originally designed to be produced from the feedstock compounds in petroleum, and the biological compounds in the renewable feedstock are quite different from the compounds in petroleum. Therefore, we are developing new industrial building blocks and future materials that can be effectively produced and used in the bio-based sustainable industries.

Furthermore, we are exploring ways to combine the carbon-negative biotechnologies with non-biological carbon-neutral/negative technologies to establish a highly sustainable bioindustry.