Featured News Stories

Turning toxic liquids into sustainable materials

Methods to combine algae and bacteria are leading to sustainability benefits

Converting waste into plastics using defined algae and bacteria consortia

£1.6 million project with Unilever and Freeland Horticulture Ltd.

New Horizons

Our new algae project gets announced...click here for info...

U.S. Department of Energy:
Systems Biology of Bioenergy-Relevant Microbes to Enable Production of Next-Generation Biofuels and Bioproducts

September 2021

Microbial communities are ubiquitous in nature, exhibiting incredibly versatile metabolic capabilities and remarkable robustness. Inspired by these synergistic microbial ecosystems, the rational design of synthetic microbial consortia is emerging as a new paradigm for bioprocessing and offers tremendous potential for solving some of the biggest societal challenges. Read the summary of our project with University of Michigan and Princeton University here.

The Chemical Engineer: From Slime to Sublime

November 2018

FROM the moment we wake up and gaze at our reflection in the mirror, we consume our first precious resource of the day whilst brushing our teeth. Our languid minds might inquire: is it necessary to leave the tap running? Within minutes we go from resource use to waste production; the cereal or milk has run out – where does the empty plastic bag, box and carton go? Hopefully, in the appropriate recycling bins (if you have them). Read more here

Microbial community engineering project featured in recent CBE Research Magazine

January 2018

"When you next throw your rubbish into a bin spare a second imagining its journey to a landfill site, components of it leaching into a pond and subsequently providing food for our algal consortia. This will provide multiple resources for you to meet on a shop’s shelf again!"

Fixing broken ecosystems: RENEW research featured in NERC magazine

July 12, 2025

"The world’s growing population is increasing demand for resources like food and clean water – but more people means more waste, and that’s having a direct impact on those resources. But all is not lost: Jags Pandhal and colleagues describe a new technique for cleaning up ecosystems that has knock-on economic benefits too."

Refitting the E.coli 'factory'

April 12, 2025

Escherichia coli cells are able to add sugars to proteins using genes from Campylobacter jenuni. Here we learn that an inverse metabolic engineering approach can improve the efficiency of the process and potentially increase the toolbox of this biopharmaceutical workhorse.