Peter Deuss received NWO XS grant for bold research

Prof. dr. Peter Deuss, professor of Catalytic Processing of Sustainable Resources at ENTEG, received an ENW-XS grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO)! ENW-XS grants are awarded to encourage curiosity-driven and bold research involving a quick analysis of a promising idea. The grant consists of EUR 50,000.

The grant is for his project “Lignin to nutraceuticals: Tuning biological factories to convert cheap renewable carbon from plant waste”. It is a collaborative project with Dr. Martin Palazzolo, Universidad Nacional de San Luis, Argentina, who currently is guest researcher in the Deuss-group.

Summary
Bio-refineries can produce energy, fuels, and chemicals from plant waste. They hold one of the keys to diminish our dependence on fossil resources and help establish the future circular society. But nowadays new bio-refining initiatives are heavily reliant on subsidies. To make them more economically competitive, they must generate new products of greater market price. Herein, we propose a high-risk, high-gain strategy to enable the production of very valuable nutraceuticals using fungal factories from thermally-treated forestry residues. Polyunsaturated fatty acids are our target, which are important dietary components included in delicate products like baby formulae.