It’s International Microorganism Day, and as part of our Meet a Member initiative, we’re sharing the story of Azar from Royal Society of Chemistry, a member organisation of the Science Council.
Azar is a chemist and educator working across biotechnology, biocatalysis and sustainable materials science, with academic and research posts at the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Salford. In this story, she explores how some of the smallest living things on the planet are helping to build a cleaner, more sustainable future.
Our Meet a Member initiative provides an opportunity for scientists and professionals from our member organisations to highlight their organisation, share their stories, celebrate their work in science and help inspire others, while spotlighting the diverse voices shaping the scientific community.
When most people think of microorganisms, they think of illness – the bacteria we scrub away, the viruses we vaccinate against, but hidden away in fermenters, bioreactors and soil, an entirely different story is unfolding. These tiny organisms represent one of our best chances of building a genuinely sustainable industrial economy.
As a chemist working in biocatalysis and enzyme engineering, I spend a lot of my time thinking about the humble enzyme; a protein produced by microorganisms that can carry out complex chemical transformations at room temperature and in water, rather than under the high heat and pressure and with the toxic solvents that traditional chemistry often demands. Immobilising these enzymes onto solid supports and running reactions continuously through microfluidic and flow chemistry systems means we can make chemical processes not only cleaner, but also more precise, less wasteful and far easier to scale.
Many of the medicines we depend on already owe their existence to microorganisms. Antibiotics were discovered in fungi – insulin, used by millions of people with diabetes, is now produced by genetically engineered bacteria and yeast rather than harvested from animals and vaccines, and complex biologics rely on fermentation at an industrial scale. As we look for more sustainable and secure ways to manufacture medicines, microbial production platforms are only going to become more important, particularly given ongoing pressures on global supply chains.
Microorganisms are also proving remarkably good at cleaning up after us. Enzymes capable of breaking down plastics, engineered microbes that can turn agricultural waste and food by-products into useful chemicals, and fermentation routes that convert carbon dioxide into fuels and materials are all active areas of research. This is the essence of a circular bioeconomy; instead of extracting new raw materials and generating waste, we use biology to close the loop, turning yesterday’s waste into tomorrow’s feedstock.
None of this works, however, without careful engineering. My own research sits at the intersection of biology and process engineering, using rheology and microfluidics to understand how these biological systems behave and designing continuous manufacturing processes that can take a promising enzyme or microbe from the lab bench to industrial-scale production without losing performance along the way. It is a genuinely interdisciplinary challenge, drawing on chemistry, biology, engineering and materials science all at once.
I came to this field via a fairly winding route – from chemical engineering through to organic and macromolecular chemistry, and now into biomanufacturing and biotechnology – and what has kept me here is the sense that this work matters. Every enzyme we successfully immobilise and every process we make greener is a small but real contribution to an industrial system that does not have to cost the earth.
Teaching the next generation of scientists, whether in industrial biotechnology, molecular biology or the circular economy, is just as rewarding. There is something particularly exciting about watching students realise that the smallest organisms on the planet might hold some of the biggest solutions to the challenges we face.
International Microorganism Day is a good moment to pause and appreciate just how much these invisible organisms already do for us, and how much more they are likely to do as we build a more sustainable future.
If you are interested in taking part in our Meet a Member Initiative, please contact Tia Richards at t.richards@sciencecouncil.org.
