Abstract
Dr. Tommaso Liccioli, is a research associate at the University of Adelaide (UoA), Department of Wine Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology (WMMB), who currently works on a Wine Australia funded project named “Fit-for-Purpose Yeast and Bacteria via Direct Evolution” (UA 1302). Dr. Liccioli attended the 2014 Meeting of the Society of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology in St Louis, MO (USA). This year attendance was of 600 and more scientists and industry related people from all around the world. Dr. Liccioli was invited to give an oral presentation on a topic he has been working and specialized over the past few years: scaling up fermentations volume for successful deployment of novel yeast strains to the wine industry. The conference committee invited Dr. Liccioli after reading one of his publications named “Microvinification – How small can we go?”. This article was written as result of a previous Wine Australia funded project (UA 05/05). During the conference, Dr. Liccioli delivered a 30 minutes talk entitled: “Hide and seek: improved microbial strains vs. scientists”. His talk generated high interest amongst the audience and Dr. Liccioli had the opportunity to discuss his research and many other related topics with several delegates during the conference.
Summary
Dr. Liccioli designed, built and assembled an automated fermentation platform that will allow strong characterization of isolates combined with high throughput. The apparatus holds 96 fermentation flasks, which are maintained at set temperature, agitation and sampling regime. The apparatus is in fact able to access the inside of the flasks, aseptically collect a sample and dispense it into a refrigerated plate, which can be collected for subsequent metabolite analysis. The fermentation platform was completed and tested just days prior to the conference and this was the first occasion to present our customized equipment to the international scientific community. At this meeting a few other scientists presented similar solutions to address communal problems in microbial screening and scaling up fermentations. Therefore, great interest was generated around the possibility of using automated equipment to control and enable accurate and powerful screening methods. Importantly, many discussions were focused on suggesting improvements and further fields of application. This aspect is particularly important to exploit the full potential of new equipment, which in turn can suggest new experiment designs, lead to new areas of investigation and/or collaborations with other research groups.
The conference also was a suitable forum to establish new networking connections and attract the interest of other researchers to the research being conducted by our group. Several scientists employed by Amyris (CA – USA) suggested visiting their analytic department, as a team of researchers are developing their customized “in house” robotic solutions for microbial screening and scale up. This team of people is very interested in exchanging knowledge and ideas to develop breakthrough analytical methods assisted by machines. Similarly, scientists at the University of Washington, from the Klavin’s Lab (Synthetic Biology, WA – USA), are working on low-cost advanced sensing devices (mainly using visible light and laser sources) in combination with small-scale fermentation vessels, to monitor and control fermentation and living cell parameters. Strong interest was expressed to initiate collaborations and exchange of information between our group and these researchers.
Lastly, many other opportunities of collaboration and/or exchange of information (also including several research groups form Europe) were discussed. Considering that the combination between automation and scientific research (including nanotechnology) is a field that is quickly progressing around the world, the networking established at this conference was a great opportunity to highlight our group’s contribution as leaders in wine microbiology/biotechnology. In order to continue making improvements for the wine industry, wine microbiology and biotechnology science will need to advance at the same pace of other biological sciences. Several opportunities and possible future application were discussed, including DNA nanomachines and biomolecular programming.