Area Wood Chemistry and Biotechnology of Wood K plus at the Eurobiotech Congress 2022 in Prague

The Wood Chemistry and Biotechnology Area was happy to accept the invitation to give a keynote and moderate a session by the organizing committee of the Eurobiotech 2022 Congress. The congress took place from October 6th to 8th, 2022 in the National Technical Library, Czech Republic in the capital Prague. (Fig.1) The “European Biotechnology Congress 2022” was organized under the patronage of the Rector of Brno University of Technology, Assoc. Prof., Ing., Ph.D., MBA, LL.M Ladislav Janíček. The conference focused on all current biotechnology research areas and was well attended by biotech academia and industry worldwide. The presented 54 lectures and 150 posters showed current research results in the fields of health and pharmacy, immunotherapy and diagnostics, genetic engineering, genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, glycomics, synthetic biology, molecular technologies, nanotechnology, bioinformatics and databases, digital technologies as well Artificial intelligence.

A highlight of the conference was the special satellite symposium on Microbial Biotechnology under the auspices of the Czech-Slovak Society for Microbiology. The third day of the conference was devoted to the latest laboratory and pilot plant results in industrial biotechnology. One focus was the microbial bioconversion of lignocellulose hydrolysates, the conversion of lignocellulose-containing biomass to lipids and exopolysaccharides by oil-containing yeasts for the production of animal feed and biochemicals, fungal solid fermentation as a way of recycling residues, for the purpose of producing food and feed supplements, the Production and application of bacterial cellulose, to name a few selected examples. The keynote by Wood Kplus (Fig. 2) on new results in the development of bio-based products and biorefineries showed the possibilities of complete biomass fractionation and linking with the further processing of carbohydrates (bifunctional furans) and lignins to functional aromatics and the subsequent synthesis of fully bio-based resins on. Furthermore, current results on the fermentative production of enantiomerically pure D-lactic acid and polyalkanoates were presented. In the discussion of the lecture, the methods for the complete primary fractionation of the biomass as a basis for the biotechnological further utilization of the material flows were questioned by the participants with particular interest. After the lecture, Wood K plus moderated a session in which PhD students discussed their experimental results in short presentations. The results on different extraction methods of apple peels and the determination of their antimicrobial properties, the process development for butanol production using co-cultures of Clostridium beijerinckii and aerobic bacterium, sulfamethoxazole removal by non-specific peroxygenase immobilization, kinetics and upscaling potential and the effectiveness of vitamin B3 and D3 against UVB-induced photoaging on primary human dermal fibroblasts are exemplified. Two lectures on medical aspects of biotechnology were also included in the session: the role of intraluteal prostaglandins in the molecular mechanisms of luteolysis regulation and the electrophysiological effects of curcumin on sensory neurons. In summary, it can be assessed that the European Biotechnology Congress 2022 in Prague was an excellent learning, exchange and networking platform for the various facets of biotechnology.

The authors would like to thank Professor Adriane Kovalcik, Faculty of Chemistry, Brno University of Technology (BUT) for dedicated organization of the presentations of the conference part on industrial biotechnology!

Figure 1: Massaryk College Conference Area at the Universityof chemistry and technology in Prague

Figure  2: Keynote Birgit Kamm of Wood Kplus to development of biobased products and biorefineries

Contact:

Birgit Kamm and Viktoria Leitner
b.kamm@wood-kplus.at
www.wood-kplus.at