UCSB Secures NSF Grant to Unlock Biotech Potential of Rare Microbes

This week, UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) secured a six-year, $22 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of its biofoundries initiative. The funding will support the creation of the BioFoundry for Extreme and Exceptional Fungi, Archaea, and Bacteria (ExFAB), a collaborative effort with UC Riverside (UCR) and Cal Poly Pomona (CPP). ExFAB will be the first biofoundry in the United States dedicated to studying and harnessing the potential of largely unexplored extreme microbes. UCSB's project is one of only five selected for NSF’s BioFoundry program this cycle, with a total of $75 million awarded to the chosen institutions.

UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang said, “Our campus is thrilled to receive this visionary funding from the National Science Foundation, which reflects the research strength and innovation of our colleagues who are working across disciplines and institutions to advance biotechnology and bioengineering.”

“We are extremely excited because this funding enables us to build infrastructure that nobody, especially in academia, has had access to before. The facility allows us to unlock the promise of a new generation of synthetic biology -; one that focuses on developing new biotechnology from extreme and unusual microorganisms found in nature,” said ExFAB Director Michelle O'Malley, a professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering at UCSB. 

ExFAB aims to develop methods for studying some of nature's most unconventional microorganisms, often called "extreme" because they defy typical laboratory growth patterns. These microbes may thrive under unique conditions, such as requiring unusual nutrients, surviving in extreme temperatures, or growing in the absence of oxygen. These characteristics make them challenging to investigate using standard lab equipment.

“These extreme microorganisms defy our current understanding of biology, yet they often host traits that we want to harness for biotechnology – such as enzymes that chew up waste, or pathways that make valuable products and new medicines. Now, with the ExFAB, users have a place to bring their 'weird' microbes to study them and prototype new biotechnology from what they learn,” O'Malley, a renowned authority on engineering anaerobes to convert waste into sustainable fuels, chemicals, and bio-based materials, remarked.

Despite numerous breakthroughs in synthetic biology, which involves reengineering nature’s components—like DNA, proteins, and even whole organisms—for new purposes, the field has predominantly concentrated on microorganisms that are easy to grow and domesticate in standard lab environments. However, these domesticated microbes often lack the very traits that are most valuable for biotechnological applications. 

In nature, the most successful biological products are typically crafted by unusual microbes with unique and challenging growth requirements. To harness the potential of these extreme microorganisms, ExFAB will leverage synthetic biology by developing groundbreaking instruments, innovative robotic systems, and machine learning-driven technologies.

ExFAB's research will revolve around three key themes: bioremediation, biosynthesis, and the rules of life. The goal is to engineer microbes capable of addressing environmental issues, such as cleaning up PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and other persistent chemicals, sustainably producing silica-based materials, recycling carbon resources, and enhancing productive carbon and nitrogen cycles in both soil and marine ecosystems.