Systems Biotechnology Group

Multi- and inter-disciplinarity to the service of enzymes: a chemical vision to biological questions for the implementation of biocatalysts in our everyday life.

 

The research activity of the Systems Biotechnology group lead by Prof. Manuel Ferrer has been markedly multidisciplinary and has had as a common thread to provide a chemical vision to biological questions, with the ultimate goal of producing basic and technological developments using experimental and theoretical tools. It has been and is a competitive research that is in the interface between the analytical chemistry, the chemical biology, the physical-chemistry, the inorganic chemistry and the organic chemistry, with fields and disciplines such as biology, microbiology, health, medicine, energy, environment and materials, to mention a few.

Lab

Our facilities are located at the Institute of Catalysis, in the Autonomous University of Madrid Campus. Enter to take a look!

Team

We are a multidisciplinary team composed on chemists, biochemists, and biologists, in tight collaboration with bioinformatics, to gain a whole perspective of the matters we face. Come and meet us!

Projects

Metamorph

MetaMorph will strive to develop a high-tech platform to perform the MetaMorphosis of enzymes  into a new generation of artificial enzyme designs and BioHybrid catalysts with innovative structures and functionalities.

Delivenz

To really get to enzyme implementation in greener industry, we need to be able to accurately predict enzyme parameters from a protein sequence. This project will develop a technology that will help to recover the precise enzymes from the ever-increasing amount of sequenced data.

FuturEnzyme

Our purpose is to make your textiles, detergents and cosmetics greener than ever. For that, a high-tech platform will use big biodata mining of databases and bioresources, and disruptive machine-learning, amongst others, to develop enzymes to be included in the production of these goods and any others of interest.

Biomachine

A project to develop “Nature-inspired” and “Artificial intelligent-edited” biologics with which to create and implement (micro)plastic-degradation strategies. Both the biologics and the strategies will allow, in a circular economy context, controlling pollution, promoting environmental restoration, and mitigating climate change.

Nymphe

Our goal is the development and implementation of bioremediation/revitalization strategies of targeted EU contaminated sites. We will use predictive microbial interaction models in the microbiome of the real places, to remove >90% of the main contaminants and improve their biodiversity status.

Upcoming Events

Novel Enzymes 2023

Next 28-31 March will take place in Greifswald (Germany) the 7th edition of this congress. Topics as enzyme engineering for new applications, enzymes designed for «new-to-nature» reactions, or novel tools for enzyme discovery and engineering will be the focus. We will be there to talk about our work and learn from others!

BioTrans 2023

A new edition of BioTrans is approaching! This summer, in La Rochelle (France), 25-29 June we will assist and participate in the 16th edition of this international symposium on Biocatalysis & Biotransformations.

5th ESSIB is now open for registration!

3-6 July 2023

The 5th European Summer School on Industrial Biotechnology will take place in Hamburg (Germany). Thisyear’s prog ram is of great interest for masters students, PhD students and postdocs in the field, focusing on finding genes and enzymes, mining the sea, finding plastic-active enzymes & others, and from (meta) genomes to applications. It will also include 3 practical courses! Check out more and register here!

 

Manuel Ferrer
mferrer@icp.csic.es
Research Professor
Systems Biotechnology Group
Office 202

Department of Applied Biocatalysis
Institute of Catalysis, Spanish National Research Council
(ICP-CSIC)
Marie Curie, 2
28049-Madrid-Spain
+34 91 585 48 72