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JSM Biotechnology & Biomedical Engineering Special Issue on Industrial Biotechnology-Made in Germany: The path from policies to sustainable energy, commodity and specialty products Edited by: Dr. Thomas Brück Professor of Industrial Biocatalysis, Dept. of Chemistry, Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany Central

Biotechnology & Biomedical Engineering Industrial Biotechnology-Made . in Germany: The Path from policies to sustainable energy, Commodity and specialty products. Brück, T.* Industrial

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Page 1: Biotechnology & Biomedical Engineering Industrial Biotechnology-Made . in Germany: The Path from policies to sustainable energy, Commodity and specialty products. Brück, T.* Industrial

JSMBiotechnology & Biomedical Engineering

Special Issue on

Industrial Biotechnology-Made in Germany: The path from policies to sustainable energy, commodity and specialty productsEdited by:Dr. Thomas BrückProfessor of Industrial Biocatalysis, Dept. of Chemistry, Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany

Central

Page 2: Biotechnology & Biomedical Engineering Industrial Biotechnology-Made . in Germany: The Path from policies to sustainable energy, Commodity and specialty products. Brück, T.* Industrial

Cite this article: Brück T (2014) Industrial Biotechnology-Made in Germany: The Path from policies to sustainable energy, Commodity and specialty products. JSM Biotechnol Bioeng 2(1): 1020.

*Corresponding authorProf.Dr. Thomas Brück, Industrial Biocatalysis, Department of Chemistry, Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany, Tel: 49-89-289-13253; Email Id:

Submitted: 16 May 2014

Accepted: 16 May 2014

Published: 16 May 2014

ISSN: 2333-7117

Copyright© 2014 Brück

OPEN ACCESS

Editorial

Industrial Biotechnology-Made in Germany: The Path from policies to sustainable energy, Commodity and specialty productsBrück, T.*Industrial Biocatalysis, Department of Chemistry, Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany

Globally, Germany is the first nation dedicated to change its entire energy supply from fossil to renewable resources in the next decades. A clear political roadmap to accomplish this changeover fosters a climate for innovation and technology development leading to new sustainable energy and fuel solutions. These trends now radiate into other industrial sectors. Particularly, climate change, limited petroleum resources and strict legislative frameworks drive the development of sustainable process development for commodity, material and specialty products. The latter include cosmetics, pharmaceutical and agrochemical products, such as biological insecticides. These specialty product lines address both sustainable population growth and increasingly aging populations in industrial countries. A key factor for translating research innovation into products is a finely tuned interaction between academia and industry. This interaction is increasingly managed by focused technology clusters, which manage the dialog between policy makers, academia and industry. The resulting technology advance allows German industries a prime positioning in the evolving market of renewable product lines. This special issue on German based Industrial Biotechnology developments will include contributions from policy makers, technology cluster managers, academics and industries involved in sustainable technology development.

The first two contributions report on specific policies and actions to support basic and applied research that initiates the innovation cascade towards sustainable new product lines. A key factor for success is the formation of academic :industrial expert groups that focus on specific process sectors. Strategies for development of new bio-based processes primarily have to consider economically and ecologically suitable biomass feedstock. With respect to a globally ever growing population, new biotechnological process should not rely on edible biomass resources, such as grain to avoid competition with food production. Hence, agricultural, forest and food processing residues, including cereal straw, wood chips and crab shell waste constitute preferred raw materials for development

of sustainable bioprocesses. In this issue we present two industrial contributions that describe commercially ready process options, which enable conversion of lignocellulose containing biomass residues streams into bioenergy (biogas) and biofuels (bioethanol). In an additional contribution, the industrial contributors describe the conversion of biomass based feedstock into various high performance polymeric materials with application in the textile, cosmetics and pharmaceutical sector. Since, complex biomass residues such as straw and wood are primarily made up of lignocellulose consisting of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin polymers, mass efficient conversion is difficult. Indeed, the utilization of polymeric biomass residues in biotechnological processes often requires primary deconstruction into its constituent monomers (i.e. sugars) using specific enzyme systems. In this issue various academic groups report on the discovery of new microbial enzyme producers as well as the characterization and optimization of individual enzyme system, which are essential for deconstruction, functionalization and valorization of biomass based raw materials. In addition to renewable bioenergy and chemicals process options, this special issue highlights renewable technologies focused on high value products, such as virus based insecticides, characterization of novel bioactive natural products and the application of custom tailored antibodies for clinical and biotechnological applications. In all reports modern tools of biological systems analysis and engineering, such metabolomics and genomics are essential to realize the potential of reported bio-manufacturing procedures.

All of these detailed bioprocesses save CO2 emissions and actively contribute to reduction of greenhouse gases and climate change. The contributions demonstrate that biotechnology can provide economically and ecologically viable alternatives to established petroleum based processes. The reported bioprocess examples demonstrate that the ongoing advance in biotechnological methods has ushered in an era of change towards a bio-based economy. Germany has internalized this route towards a completly sustainable economy and can provide cutting edge technologies to catalyze a global transition.