Elemental | Engineering Biology Hub

The ELEMENTAL Hub is led by the University of Kent in partnership with the Universities of Durham, East Anglia, Manchester, Surrey, York, Natural History Museum, University College London and the Quadram Institute, Norwich. It is one of six UKRI Mission Hubs announced in February 2024. The ELEMENTAL Hub aims to provide a suite of engineering biology techniques and approaches to develop sustainable and efficient solutions to address many of the environmental challenges facing our planet concerning metal waste and metal-scarcity. The environmental challenges associated with metal contamination from industrial waste, mining, nuclear processing, or electronic waste are quite distinct and require a coordinated interdisciplinary approach to address them effectively. Metal contamination also results from inefficient metal uptake from growth media in cellular and microbial fermentation processes used in industrial biotechnology, which pollute the product and waste streams. ELEMENTAL will focus on developing metal and process-specific solutions to these environmental challenges by leveraging our expertise in synthetic biology and metal cell biology. Through our innovative approach to engineering biology, coupled with stakeholder engagement and public policy frameworks, our hub will develop sustainable and efficient solutions to address the environmental challenges posed by metal contaminated wastes.