Future Fellowship success

Centre members, Dr Amy Cain and Associate Professor Tim Mercer are among 10 mid-career researchers nationally to be named awarded Australian Research Council Future Fellowships.

Dr Amy Cain, of Macquarie University, leads a project on microbial junk food – developing synthetic platforms for plastic degradation. This project aims to establish the genetic basis of polyethelene biodegradation (PED) by microbes from the gut microbiome of plastic-eating caterpillars. It will transform the active microbial PED genes into carefully designed synthetic microbes for efficient, safe and large-scale PED. The outcomes will have the potential to transform the relative ineffective and expensive current methods for PE disposal into flexible, cost-effective and sustainable solutions applicable to multiple sectors.

Associate Professor Timothy Mercer of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland, has a project to engineer synthetic genes to allow standardisation and optimisation of biomanufacturing processes.