News
Lab Blog
July, 2023
ARC Future Fellowship for Georg!
Very exciting to announce that Georg has managed to win one of the prestigious ARC Future Fellowships. With the funding provided through the Fellowship our lab will be able make key advancements in turning our beloved Vibrio natriegins into a highly valuabel platform chassis for synthetic biology and microbial cell factory. Thanks to all the people who have contributed to the already running projects and to those supporting us in our SynBio mission.
Congratulations Georg! We are all proud to have you as our team leader and look forward to what the next years will bring.
May, 2023
Entrepreneur program completed
We congratulate Anna for completing the ten week entrepreuneur program Concept to Creation at CERI (Centre for Entrepreneurial Research and Innovation). Key takeaways from this program include lessons on emphasizing the significance of one's "why" in all endeavors; recognizing the transformative power of passion in leadership and its impact on driving innovation across various societal domains; and stressing the importance of identifying problems and understanding customers as essential components of success.
We extend our gratitude to both the audience and the judges for recognizing our efforts at the FritzLab and granting us second place in the people's choice category as well as third place in the judges' choice category at the final pitch night, winning AUD 4,000.
April, 2023
Welcome, Katy!
We are happy to welcome Katy Morris as a new M.Sc. to our lab! Katy is an enthusiastic molecular biologists. Together with Roland and the Fritz lab, she works on genetically engineering Vibrio natriegens to optimise bioplastic production from carbon dioxide.
February, 2023
Visit by Woodside innovation experts
We had great pleasure in welcoming a group of international experts from Woodside Energy working on the company's innovation team. This special visit gave us the chance to explain how we use methods of biotechnology and synthetic biology to drive change towards a circular and sustainable economy. During a lab tour, the FritzLab showed the Woodside visitors how we are working on capturing CO2 with microalgae, degrading PET plastic using a genetically engineered Vibrio natriegens strain and managing high-throughput workflows using pipetting robots.
February, 2023
$1.6M of funding to convert CO2 emissions into bioproducts
Hey there, exciting news! We are thrilled to announce that our team has been awarded a new ARC Linkage Project, "Building a CO2 foundry for sustainable carbon capture and utilization", which we and a team of chemists and biochemists from the UWA School of Molecular Sciences will run together with the New Energy team from Woodside Energy Ltd.
Our aim is to develop innovative technology that fuses synthetic biology with inorganic chemistry to capture and convert CO2 emissions from industrial sources into valuable chemicals like acetate, biopolymers and platform chemicals. We will be creating nano-structured electrocatalysts and genetically engineering microbes to achieve maximum CO2 conversion efficiency. This project has immense potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pave the way for a carbon-negative chemical industry.
We are excited to be leading this project and grateful for the support from the ARC, Woodside and UWA! We believe that this project will showcase how innovation and technology can help mitigate environmental problems and create a sustainable future for all of us. So stay tuned for updates as we embark on this exciting journey.
January, 2023
Industry insights at Richgro
Thanks to Dr. Bede Mickan, the FritzLab and Dr. Heng Chooi (SMS, UWA) were given an exclusive tour at the Richgro Facilities in Perth, WA. We learned about the production of compost, anaerobic fermentation of plant waste, biotechnology on an industrial scale, and the company's efforts to reduce the introduction of plastics into the environment. It was great to bring researchers and industry experts together to learn about up-scaling as well as political and financial considerations in the local biotech industry.
January, 2023
Welcome, Wlad!
We warmly welcome Wladimir Fae Neto as a new postdoc to our lab! Wlad is an oceanographer with a background in marine biotechnology. With him, exciting new microbes will move into the lab as Wlad is working on capturing CO2 with microalgae. We are very pleased to welcome Wlad to the FritzLab team that now has additional support on its mission to drive green biotechnology and synthetic biology forwards.
November, 2022
New funding by the Australian Research Council to support the construction of synthetic genetic timer circuits
It's time to celebrate some exciting news! The ARC has recently funded our new Discovery Project called "Synthetic biology tools for just-in-time control of biosynthetic pathways". This project is set to revolutionize the way we produce valuable chemicals, ranging from antibiotics to biomaterials.
Synthetic biology has been making waves in the field of sustainable synthesis, allowing us to create precious chemicals in an eco-friendly way. However, there have been some obstacles along the way. One of the biggest issues is that many of these compounds are toxic to microbes, making traditional production methods challenging. This new project is going to tackle this problem head-on. By building genetic circuits that enable smart, just-in-time activation of target genes, the project aims to overcome this limitation. This approach is pervasive in natural pathways and will allow us to boost production levels of valuable antibiotics and calcite precipitation in self-healing concrete. The latter aim will be tackled in collaboration with Prof Susanne Gebhard from the University of Mainz, Germany.
It's exciting to think about the possibilities that this project will unlock for the field of synthetic biology. We are enthusiastic and determined to push the boundaries of what's possible. With the support of the ARC, we can look forward to seeing some groundbreaking results in the near future!
November, 2022
Successful participation at the 5th Annual PhD Research Symposium
Every year, PhD candidates at the School of Molecular Sciences at UWA present their work at the Annual PhD Research Symposium. This year, Roland and Anna showed their research results in the form of posters. In lively discussions, they talked about their findings and open questions. Congratulations to Roland who won the Best Biochemistry Poster Award sponsored by Eppendorf.
September, 2022
Talk and poster presentation at the ComBio 2022 conference
We are happy that Anna and Roland could participate successfully at the ComBio 2022 conference in Melbourne. Both PhD students actively presented their work, made new research connections and intensified the lab's network with sales-reps and companies. In the category "Synthetic Biology", Roland gave his first conference talk about his PhD research on bioplastic production with Vibrio natriegens. We are also excited that Anna won the ASBMB poster price for the display of the team's results on microbial PET degradation.
September, 2022
Rojan Beikrasouli joins us for an exciting undergraduate project
Rojan is going to join our PhD student Rebecca to develop new antimicrobial combination assays using our automation systems. Her work will focus on using cell-wall targeting antibiotics and explore how the combination of these affects growth of gram-positive bacteria. Very happy to have you join us Rojan!!
September, 2022
Great time at the Research Bazar 2022
What a great oppertunity to participate in the ResBaz 2022 workshops at the Curtin University, Perth. Rebecca, Roland, Anna and Wing spent three days learning about different programming languages, personal branding and bioinformatic pipelines. The new knowledge and research connections will for sure come in useful in the upcoming months.
August, 2022
Robson and Robertson Award goes to Anna Faber!
We are excited that Anna was granted one of the Robson and Robertson Awards 2022. This Young Scholar Program is funded by the Jock Clough Marine Foundation. The award will help Anna to extend her research on microbial plastic degradation in cooperation with researchers from the UWA Oceans Institute.
Synthetic Biology Australasia (SBA) is a non-profit society that aims to support the rapidly growing synthetic biology research field in Australia, New Zealand, and the broader Australasian region.
April, 2022
Yay - the SBA conference 2023 will be held in Perth!
We are thrilled that the next SBA conference in 2023 will be held in Perth, WA, tentatively for 3 days in mid-November! As a bi-annual event, SBA'23 is expected to see between 250-300 participants from academia and industry, thereby constituting one of the largest Synthetic Biology meetings in the southern hemisphere. Georg will be chairing the conference and is working hard to get all ducks in a row. More updates to follow...
March, 2022
Welcome, Anna!
We warmly welcome Anna Faber as a new PhD student to our lab! She has a background in microbiology and chemistry and graduated from the University of Marburg in Germany. In her PhD, Anna will work on an exciting project aiming to engineer microbial plastic degradation pathways in bacteria. Her work is supported through a generous PhD scholarship from the Forrest foundation. We wish you the best of luck with your project!!