Our vision for engineering biology and industrial biomanufacturing

The Advanced Engineering Biology Future Science Platform team shine a light on our vision, research progress and future direction.

‘Our vision for a Future Made in Australia is set to deliver significant economic growth, potentially contributing 30 billion dollars to the Australian economy and creating 50,000 new jobs by 2040, as outlined in our Synthetic Biology Roadmap

The global bioeconomy is rapidly expanding, driven by technological advancements in bioengineering that are making manufacturing processes more cost-effective and scalable. This growth is not only an environmental necessity for net zero, but also a strategic move to enhance sovereign manufacturing capabilities, and secure essential supply chains in an increasingly disrupted world.

To achieve net zero, electrification is vital for energy, but a significant portion of the barrel of crude oil goes towards physical products such as chemicals.

Biobased alternatives currently represent 2% of the 4 trillion-dollar chemicals market, but this share must increase in a world transitioning from fossil inputs. Globally, governments and industries are investing billions of dollars into industrial biomanufacturing and Australia MUST participate and seize the opportunity from our competitive advantages of feedstocks and world class science. This is our challenge and our goal.

Our bioengineering research has a pivotal role in industrial biomanufacturing through leading edge AI design; molecular, cell and process engineering; and the socio-economics of successful implementation – but overall, industrial biomanufacturing is a team sport.

Engineering biology sits next to other areass. From agricultural, waste and gaseous feedstocks – the broader AI ecosystem – various complementary manufacturing processes and expertise – to sustainability transitions and the circular economy of pollution and waste.

So what do we contribute?

Biotechnology is being revolutionised by AI, as shown by last year’s Nobel prize for chemistry for AI driven protein design and structure prediction. We are striving hard to keep CSIRO at the leading edge of this rapidly advancing area, given the importance of AI for Biology across many parts of CSIRO.

We have built a large interdisciplinary team of computational and wet lab scientists utilising cutting edge infrastructure including supercomputing and biofoundry level lab automation that delivers large high-quality datasets – which are essential for model training, validation and use. The resulting knowledge and accurate function prediction further enhances our lab tools to rapidly engineer biology for industrial applications.

CSIRO is deeply committed to advancing the social sciences of bioengineering, with a world-leading team in this area. We ensure bioengineering solutions align with societal values and needs to maximise their uptake and impact.

Our work focuses on understanding the complex interactions between individuals, society, institutions and future innovations. We actively investigate behavioural and economic considerations, assess social and institutional impacts, and provide thought leadership on equitable and ethical access to bioengineering benefits and risks. Our goal is to achieve maximum societal benefit through proactive interdisciplinary integration of socio-economic, biophysical and computational sciences.

And we don’t do this alone. There are big moves afoot both nationally and internationally in bioengineering and industrial biomanufacturing.

We are deeply connected to the international community through things like participation in World Economic Forum and OECD initiatives, helping shape global strategies and keeping us linked to the latest developments and trends.

In Australia, the community has come together to ‘build our biofuture’, with CSIRO a key part of this Team Australia approach. We provide trusted advice to state and federal governments and work together on new opportunities.  

We collaborate widely, actively working on projects with Australian and international companies and universities, developing new knowledge, technologies and essential skills.

Engineering bioplastic degrading enzymes is a good exemplar project as it is addressing a critical issue around plastics circular economy and waste. It relies on bioengineering to develop high-performance enzymes and industrial biomanufacturing processes, for enzyme production and plastic breakdown.

CSIRO has a long history of impactful enzyme development work, and we are supercharging that expertise using big data and AI. We have built biofoundry workflows that can test tens of thousands of candidate enzymes per week for a range of desirable enzyme properties, such as activity, specificity and stability. These big, bespoke datasets are being used to generate and train AI models and algorithms to accurately predict functions and rapidly engineer industrially compatible new enzymes.

We have internal CSIRO collaborations with Science Digital to elevate these tools into an agent driven platform that will be a one-stop-shop for AI for Biology, revolutionising how we and our partners do bioengineering into the future.

Other tools and datasets are being developed for designing binding proteins for environmental contaminants like PFAS molecules, rare earth metals and for biosensors – as well as modelling the metabolism of cells to engineer improved chemical manufacturing by microbes.

A second project exemplifies our efforts to understand societal and institutional factors in the transition to industrial biomanufacturing. We are articulating and exploring challenges related to costs, technology risks and policy gaps that hinder scalability and adoption, especially in regional areas.

To ensure positive environmental outcomes, we are developing a comprehensive sustainability framework to identify key challenges and opportunities. This knowledge will guide decision making for sustainable biomanufacturing in our regions.

So, where to from here?

We will expand our collaborations with industry and across CSIRO, recognising that biological solutions to challenges require biomanufacturing – whether it’s to produce chemicals, enzymes for environmental cleanup, new agricultural products, biosensors for real-time monitoring, or innovative methods for mineral recovery.

We will continue to advise on international developments and opportunities. And, alongside our ecosystem partners, we will use bioengineering to help secure supply chains and build a major biomanufacturing sector in Australia.’

To discover more about this work, explore our current research themes. Or, for more detail about the exciting science we are doing every day, dive into our latest projects.