Microbial culture heterogeneity study and optimisation

Despite having the same genetic material, there is generally a high degree of variation in performance between individual cultured microbial cells, leading to variation in their productivity when being employed as cell factories to produce recombinant proteins. One significant source of variation is caused by cells randomly losing the foreign plasmids that have been inserted into them, which has the genetic information required for the production of recombinant proteins, causing them to no longer be productive. In this thesis, I conducted research to understand what supports the growth of these plasmid-free non-producing cells even in a cultivation environment that should select against their survival, as well as strategies that could be implemented to discourage their growth in the cell culture. Finally, I investigated ways to effectively use this variability in mixed communities of microbes.