Episode 5
Featuring Prof. Dr. Tobias Erb, Microbiologist and winner of the Future Insight Prize 2022
In this episode we get curious about Co2 and unravel how we can take a plant’s natural process of photosynthesis and enhance the pathways to create a more efficient and effective carbon capture model. Discovering how that can then be made into fuel will be announced at the Curious Future Insight Conference in 2024. Joining me for this conversation virtually from Europe is Prof. Dr. Tobias J Erb, Director of the department of Biochemistry and Synthetic Metabolism at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marberg, Germany
OUR GUEST BIO:
Tobias J. Erb is synthetic biologist and Director at the Max Planck Institute for terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany. His team interfaces biology and chemistry and centers on the discovery, function and engineering of CO2-converting enzymes and pathways. Research in Erb’s lab crosses multiple scales: from the molecular mechanisms of carboxylases to their ecological relevance, and from understanding the evolution of natural CO2-fixation to developing new-to-nature solutions, such as synthetic CO2-fixation pathways and artificial chloroplasts.
Erb studied Chemistry and Biology and did his PhD in 2009 at the University of Freiburg (D) and the Ohio State University (US). After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Illinois (US), he headed a junior research group at ETH Zürich (CH) from 2011 to 2014, before he relocated to the Max Planck Institute in Marburg, where he was promoted to Director in 2017.
Erb received numerous awards, among them the Research Awards of the Swiss and the German Societies for Microbiology (SGM and VAAM), the Otto Bayer Award (2018) the Prix Forcheur (2021), and the Future Insight Award 2023. He was named one of 12 up- and coming scientists by American Chemical Society’s C&EN in 2015 and elected to the European Academy of Microbiology in 2019 and EMBO in 2021. He is elected member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2023 and received the Leibniz-Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 2024.
HELPFUL LINKS:
www.instagram.com/becurious_podcast
Max Planck Institute
https://www.mpi-marburg.mpg.de/erb
Department Erb: https://www.mpi-marburg.mpg.de/biochemistry-and-synthetic-metabolism
Erb lab:
https://www.mpi-marburg.mpg.de/erb
Curious Future Insight Conference
www.curiousfutureinsight.org
Science Declaration
www.make-science-not-war.org
CREDITS:
The BE CURIOUS PODCAST is brought to you by ECODA MEDIA
Host: Louise Houghton
Production by: Deviants Media
Producer: Louise Houghton
Assistant Producer: Marta Wagner
Assistant Producer: Ralph Cortez
Motion Graphics: Josh Dage
[Music] welcome to the B curious podcast the podcast that Champions solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems I’m your host Louise Halton and in each episode we get curious about a different subject from the food that we eat and the clothes that we wear to overflowing landfills and ocean Plastics all of our guests have Brilliant Minds and innovative ideas to allow us to lead a more sustainable conscious and pollutant-free life and the best part is this podcast isn’t just about listening it’s about building a community and connecting like-minded individuals who are curious about alternatives to enhance their lives and the longevity of the planet and if you’re curious already and you want to find out more about the wonderful gifts and services given to us by our many guests on the show then just head over to our Instagram for more information you can find out how to enter at be curious podcast it is such a pleasure to share what companies and organizations are doing for future Generations everyone featured Works in a sustainable way and I love how much people are on the same page wanting to create and innovate in order to make change if you feel the same then why not following my footsteps and sign the science declaration this declaration is a call to All Nations societies and organizations to devote more resources to the advancements of Science and Technology they’re encouraging people internationally to join forces in battling debilitating diseases ensuring sufficient food for a growing world population stopping the destruction of our environment and engaging in joint Endeavors to elucidate the secrets this fascinating Universe holds to add your name go to make- science- not- war.org and take an active stand to demand more money as put into improving rather than destroying our world you can also hear more about this declaration at the future Insight conference that’s being held in mines Germany on the 10th and 11th of July over the two days academic and Industry leaders will come together to share their knowledge and latest Innovations the conference focuses on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary conversations and will cover topics of science technology and everything else making huge steps forward in their prospective industry you’re also welcome to enter competitions and contribute to their dream board a place that allows you to dream big and share your Visions for the future what you want to see invented and why it’s really your chance to get involved and take an active role in leaving the planet in a better place than when you were born onto it that’s how I see it anyway and I hope you share the same view to check out the competitions get tickets or write out your dreams head to curious future insight.org for more information today we’re getting curious about CO2 and discovering how one Innovative scientist has found a way that we can use our planet’s excess carbon emissions as fuel joining us for the conversation all the way from Europe is Professor do tobs Erb director of the Department of biochemistry and synthetic metabolism at the max plank Institute for terrestrial microbiology in marberg Germany thank you so much for joining us Toby thank you for hosting me of course I’m excited to see you at the future Insight conference this year in mines Germany I just told our listeners about it and what I also need to mention is that there is the option to join the conference virtually as well so if you do want to do that go to curious future insight.org and you’ll find out how to register Now Toby this will be your second time there at the conference when is your talk scheduled for do you know yeah my talk is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon directly after the award ceremony of the future inside prize ah and the future insight prize is the reason that you were there back in 2022 because you were awarded with the prize itself which is a prize that was created by Merk group kgaa to fund research for ambitious dream projects in the fields of Health Nutrition and energy and with your award you received €1 million for your research on converting CO2 to fuel how did it feel to win that prize it felt great of course it was fantastic and completely unexpected news at least for me and I think I think was fantastic acknowledgement for the work of my team uh and it’s of course also a big motivation for us to keep on going and doing our research and I have to say of course one million euros helps a lot too because it adds a lot of degrees of freedom to our research sure must do how long have you been working on your research I guess it’s around about 15 years and I started thinking about this project as a postdoc uh I think we developed the first prototype within 5 to seven years 2016 I think round about and now we’re at the stage where we’re really trying to implement these Solutions and again this sounds like a long time 10 15 years but if you think about rening a process that has been built by Evolution over billions of years I think we’re quite fast and what is the size of your team okay we are currently around about 40 scientists across all career stages from the intern to the senior posto or senior scientist and more importantly for me also across all different disciplines right from biology to chemistry physics uh and even material sciences and I think that is exactly the right mix of people that you need if you want to tackle a big challenge in an interdisciplinary fashion yeah and before we actually get into your research I would love to just talk a bit more about CO2 emissions in general do you know what the average person’s carbon Fint actually is yeah that’s a very good question so of course it depends strongly in where you live and how you live and so let’s just take an average German I think we are around about 7 to 10 tons per person and now you can look into different parts of the world let say North American would maybe use 1.5 times more CO2 per capita whereas somebody who lives in the global South would only have a fraction of it maybe quarter or a fifth of the C2 emissions per per person so the lifestyle really is one of the most important factors and the lifestyle is of course because of everything that we do more so in the Western World Travel More and eat in excess and all those kinds of things so what about those kind of different Industries how do they contribute yeah so I think it’s it might be even better to think in sectors as you just mentioned let’s think about Transportation which adds a lot to the CO2 emissions let’s think about energy consumption even using computers you know using software chat GPT right it’s a big thing too and then of course meat or eating eating agriculture is also big contributor to emissions and last but not least it’s all the construction industry what kind of environmental impacts are we going to see if we continue with these emissions and them increasing in the way that they have done over the last decade or so yeah I think this has been well established I think we’ve all experienced that it’s actually since the round about 1950s when the anthropos scene started I think we we know that is an increasing global average temperature which comes along with extreme weather conditions uh flash floods droughts wildfires and I mean this is pretty clear that we need to deal with these excess CO2 in the atmosphere and it seems that governments are not necessarily doing all that they could as well why do you think that that is that’s a very good question um I I think first and foremost it’s probably real the lifestyle of us human beings right and I think this comes along with all the resources traveling housing energy as I just said and the problem is that we typically are stuck with certain Technologies and these develop only very slowly we are very convenient once we have a certain way of of living right and to change all those behaviors it’s much much more complicated right it’s bit like in bii’s evolution once you you fixed a certain trade it’s pretty hard to to get into into a new Optimum right and radical new Solutions and this actually is nice story when people talk about uh Rockets right how the modern rockets were transport from A to B and now this all goes back to the Roman Empire and the civilization first chariots so sometimes standards set by industry are just perpetuated over centuries and I think that is the the challenge the way we do things it’s not that the government have a vested interest in the oil and gas industry then well the oil and gas industry has made us rich right it has also led to of course Improvement in in life expectancy right in life quality so there is something that is attached to to to using fossil fi to produce new compounds and the question is how can we replace the way we do things right not necessarily the product but the way how we create the product and I think this goes along with on the one hand trying to incentivize new approaches and to become also aware of the opportunities that lie in in creating sustainable future so how do we get the governments to actually get on board and take responsibility and really promote renewable energy resources it’s two ways right one thing is to incentivize right so you can support or you can punish right you can tax CO2 and I think these are the B ways we have to find a way in between and I’m not a politician by the way so I’m a scientist and I think I have the freedom to think about the future and governments can also be technology open and they can support science and I think that is what I’m advocating for right I can develop a future Technologies I can be curious about the World of Tomorrow and I think that’s my biggest contribution and then Society and governments have to decide if they want to use the Technologies and I think this is how I would look at the this interface and interplay between politicians scientist and the society what do you think that the biggest way to combat CO2 actually is that they could do actually look this is too big of a problem that you would have one solution to it and I think what we’ll see is way different solutions so Transportation I think electricity is key right uh you can look at at agriculture maybe swapping a bit out the meat consumption lowering our meat consumption is is one way way to do it and then there’s also biology in the mix which can actually fix and capture carbon and I think that will be the contribution that we can do as biologists using and empowering biology become even more efficient at capturing the C2 from the atmosphere yeah I think I agree with you you know it needs to come from all different angles and I love seeing initiatives from companies even ones that just say Oh They’ll plant a tree if you buy something from them there’s even an Instagram account called uh plant a tree organization and just for following them on Instagram they’ll actually plant a tree up to aund thousand trees I believe so even just small initiatives like that you know seem to be helping in some way or another but that’s just on a smaller scale we need to do something on a more global scale and on a much bigger scale which is I know what you’re doing yourself so where did the idea for the CO2 to fuel converter come from it comes actually from my basic interest and curiosity how Nature has found a way to capture CO2 from the atmosphere something we cannot do as chemist I’m a trained biologist and chemist as a chemist I have only limited tools to capture atmospheric CO2 and biology can do it in a sustainable fashion and this fascinated me and then I start thinking about where the limitations of biology are and where maybe chemistry could help in blend in and this exactly when I started to think about how to use synthetic approaches to improve biological carbon capture and so what did you know about photosynthesis and the value of CO2 before you started I when we were about photosynthesis in school but for people who might need a reminder do you want to tell us fantastic so if if you want to do it in in in one sentence I think uh photosynthesis is a sustainable way to capture the greenhouse gas CO2 with light as energy source and it’s as simple as that right it’s a plant it’s a filter that filters CO2 and makes biomass out of it and we can eat the biomass or we can construct a chair or a house from this biomass so that’s a fantastic sustainable way to capture CO2 so it’s not known is that nature has even invented other ways Beyond this classical photosynthesis way in fact seven other Pathways and this has inspired me to think well this is seven Solutions there might be even eight 9 10 11 Solutions or some of them Nature has never thought of and this is where the idea of synthetic biology and Reinventing photosynthesis came can you dive into that in a little bit more detail so I mean mean the overall motivation is to look how nature and the different ways of how nature can capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere then we want to extract this principle and we want to think how to build it from scratch in a new way and I want to give you a different picture for that think about how we humans learn to fly across the ocean we studied birds and bird flight and then we build a machine a plane a plane has wings but the wings don’t flap and the wings don’t have feathers so now go back to photosynthesis you can use light to fix carbon dioxide the N does it with photosynthesis let’s inspect those principles and build a device maybe a small bio machine that can do exactly the same but much more efficient and it can be constructed very differently so that’s basically way I would look at that our approach it’s so interesting to hear about all of the developments that you’ve made within your research so far and I know that um you’ve named your research the catch cycle can you tell us a little bit more about where that name came from so the catch cycle is basically a new operating system for carbon capture it’s like the software that allows you to capture carbon in a biological software in a sense right and we called it catch because it stands for oh man croon COA ethyl COA hydroxy Co pathway that’s an awful name so we thought catch might be better and you also play a little bit with the word of catching CO2 from the atmosphere it’s not spelled like catch is it it’s spelled how do you spell it it’s a e it’s a catch it’s it’s I don’t know what the English translation would be in German you would call it catch so that’s a maybe my my German roots in me uh so you know you want to give your operating system different names so like you had windows right you would have the iOS system the Dos system so we basically name those those different Cycles we also have a hopc cycle a Theta cycle so these are all different flavors and different solutions for the same problem that we currently prototype and what is the rate of carbon fixation from this bioengineered system compared to the natural form of photosynthesis yeah thank you I would basically take two measures or two ways how to compare to Natural photosynthesis and there’s two things that are important first of all how fast or how much C2 can It capture per time and so the catch cycle for instance uses a new enzyme a new bio Catalyst that can capture CO2 10 to 20 times faster than natural photosynthesis which allows you to fix 10 to 20 times more CO2 in the same time it’s fantastic so it’s fast and you also want to actually use little energy right sunlight hydrogen electricity and the question is how much energy do you need and so the catch cycle again beats natural photosynthesis and it’s half it’s half of the energy that natural photosynthesis would need so in summary it’s a fast and very energy efficient solution to fix carbon Dix it’s like a Porsche you drive with high speed and you just need a little bit of fuel to go along 100 miles 200 miles so that’s basically the way we look at things and just to you know I know you’ve been doing these analogies which are brilliant to to bring it into um a more understandable form for everybody listening but just so I can clarify then what we’re really sort of looking at here with this catch cycle is photosynthesis that you’ve taken down you see all these different Pathways and then you’ve seen that these different Pathways create a way um and you can actually bioengineer them to make them when then without using the actual plant yes that’s correct so we basically operate the whole system outside of the plant that’s fantastic that’s basic science and we can prototype it much faster think about how long it takes to grow a blant to to test its effects so the idea really is to extract this principle to build a new operat system and then bringing it back into for instance a plant or other natural cell or even artificial cell in the future it’s like you build an engine and later you put this engine into a chassis right I see and you’ve also developed another synthetic system called the taco pathway can you tell us about that now it’s getting confusing all those different names and solutions um yeah absolutely right so the taco pathway is also an artificial synthetic pathway I want to give you one difference let’s say the catch side is a complete new engine we built let’s say an electrical car we need a new engine right let’s take a normal car a diesel engine you want to tune this engine and taco pathway is more tuning existing photosynthesis with new Solutions and the catch cycle is building a complete new engine that drives in a different way and so these are the two ways of trying to improve photosynthesis on a mid and maybe on a longterm scale and arguably the taco pathway is much faster to realize compared to the catch cycle but it’s not as efficient there’s a lot of different layers to your research where did it go from there after you discovered that one from I think science is non plannable but you can have visions where to go right and sometimes you face a challenge you might be able to solve or not to solve within the next 10 years so I would say we have now these operating systems like you just mentioned Taco pathway or the catch cycle one of the big challenges now to put those systems back into a cell-like environment this could be natural cell as I said a plant or it could be an artificial artificial cell I think these are currently the most exciting experiments in our lab so will those systems also work inside of a host of a living or artificial host is that a step that’s next then to try it in an artificial host yeah and the reason why we also build so many different solutions is you know they might actually work outside of the cell they might work in the lab just isolated but they might not work inside of the cell you know you basically develop maybe five or 10 Solutions and of these five or 10 Solutions maybe only one will will be functional inside of a cell and so this will be a lot of testing a lot of tuning a lot of trying to engineer cells to accept this new operating systems and this is where it also becomes really difficult to predict how cells will react to this new software and these new Solutions if you’re like me then you’re curious about the future and what that will look like for our children and our children’s children a great place to feed my curiosity is at the Curious future Insight conference that happens every other year I’ve already got my tickets to head to mines Germany on the 10th and 11th of July for this year’s Edition over the two days academic and Industry leaders will come together to share their knowledge and their latest Innovations they will talk about the problems we’re encountering on a global scale but this is not a conference that focuses on everything going wrong quite the opposite the fure Insight conference is a really positive and uplifting place to be because the speakers have been working for years on solutions from major players like MC to startups only a few months old the lineup of Keynotes and panels really show the seniority in each industry and the best part is that everyone is talking about what they’re doing to make a difference in the world this year among many others they have the CEO of bio and Tech UGA sahen the founder of Boston Dynamics mark rbert and also the Nobel Prize winner and Professor Steven Chu it’s a place where you can connect with like-minded individuals in Academia and Industry take part in workshops like the microplastics hackathon and you may even be interested in entering yourself or your company into one of the many competitions they have running annually they have the nature spin-off prize science and shorts prize and the future Insight prize is the crema creme awarding half a million EUR as a he helpful research Grant if you want to find out more about the event and grab your tickets head over to curious futurein insight.org to find out more information I’ll also put a link to the page in the show notes and if you do come and you see me there please don’t be shy and say hi it would be such a pleasure to connect with you all so how do you actually plan to go about implementing these Pathways into a carbon cturing model what would that model actually look like so it’s two things that you need uh you basically need the idea and the software or this kind of catch Cycles Taco Pathways however you call it and at the same time you need tools to engineer the organisms to bring these complex Pathways in and I think what we’re currently are trying to do is establishing new technologies to radically reprogram organisms and that is really automated High throughput ways to for instance modify and manipulate the chloroplast and that is uh where we invest a lot and uh hopefully we manag to really get those systems or parts of the system inside of a chloroplast to see what the effects would be and so what is the next Milestone that you hope to achieve with your research if I could dream I would like to see the catch cycle operating inside of a living cell um because if you think about it cells are not just bags of enzymes or or small envelopes that you can put stuff into it they have billions of years of History it’s almost like you would have an engine right or car and then you try to put a complete new engine in so you have to really rewire a lot of things a lot of things are interconnected right this is what living systems are highly complex things and you know you can just change a part you need to take everything into account and I think what we have to learn is how to tweak those systems and how to generate incentives that they accept this new software and so my dream would be to get parts of the catch cycle functional parts of the taco pathway function inide of living system and then let Evolution take over and see what the effects are and hopefully the system is convinced that the new way to fix carb is much better and this would be fantastic I know research takes so long as well so how long do you think it is before you start seeing some of these developments okay that is basically a teaser for my talk so we do have really good experiments it’s and I would like to show Al what they’ve achieved with the last two years also through support from the from the future inside price right so we actually have established a way how to manipulate the chloroplast at high throughput and we’ve actually put in in small Pathways and they seem to work so we’re very excited to now prototype and and enlarge in our screen capabilities and I think that is uh what I would like to share with you when I give my presentation a so that’s a very big teaser we have to tune into the future Insight conference to hear more and for those people who are listening to this after the future in Zite cads uh I think there might be information available on their website sometimes they’ll show some of the talks then afterwards virtually so um fing cross you can hear after that well thank you so much for explaining all of this to us are there any tips that you would give our listeners to reduce their own CO2 emissions well first I think you should just get aware where you where you basically emit CO2 right you think you really consider how much you travel you should also consider how you travel right how you commute every day right I think it’s a small steps that are really important right buying fruits need do they need to fly across the ocean right do you eat seasonal all of these small steps matter at the end of the day and it’s it’s not the governments right it’s us each individual that can make a difference in a decision and I think getting aware of what your footprint is is one of the biggest achievements and then we can work together as a society to try to improve and I think this would be fantastic and where can people keep up to date with what you’re doing well of course you can always come to the Curious in Curious inside conference curiosity is as the first step I I think what we also doing is reaching out to the to the society and we actually have develop let’s say programs for schools where we work with school kids because those are the the Next Generation scientists but also the people that be most affected by the global change and the climate change and I think it’s really important to tell them that science has Solutions some solutions take time and certain Technologies also come with certain risks we’re talking for instance about genetically modified food or genetically modified organisms but we can balance if they are benefit for the climate if they’re safe why should we not use them and I think it’s also part of education is to empower people to make deliberate decisions and to tell them there is a way to overcome all these challenges and you can actually positive into the future and Thinking Beyond let’s say the current limitations is maybe way to find new Solutions I think we human beings have shown this several times that if we wrap up and get ourselves together we can find a new way to treat cancer we can fly to the moon and we can save the climate and so what is it you’re actually doing with the schools just giving them talks or kind of starting initiatives with them it’s actually fantastic so the high school examination the high school textbooks have actually put in our catch c as an example what science can achieve and this is fantastic so what we now Empower them is to build their own Pathways we’ve designed a small uh a small memory uh a small game you can play in school you can design your own pathway can put it together and you can calculate how efficient it is and the kids just love it right and so we’re hoping to roll it out now to all the schools in Germany maybe even internationally it’s a very nice way to get into the science but also very interactive and it shows the creativity that you need to have as a scientist and also the communication and working the team so I think it it touches many points that I like to do when I’m doing science yes definitely uh and I look forward to hearing more from you at the future Insight conference as well just for our listeners if you are hearing this and you want to join on the 10th and 11th of July you can do that virtually if you’re not able to get to min’s Germany so just go to curious future insight.org for more information on how to register do you have a website where people can follow what you’re doing at the max blank Institute I do have a website I can memorize the URL but you’ll find it there just Google Tobi herb Max blank society and right there you are and it’s actually a lot of content that’s also for the non-scientists a couple of explanation videos so I think we take it seriously and you can follow me on Twitter or X how is it called now it’s called hash handle herbal apps fantastic thank you so much we’ll also put all those links in the show notes as well so that uh people can find them very easily along with the one for the Curious future Insight conference that’s happening um on the 10th and 11th of July I’d love to also mention our Instagram accounts be curious podcast that’s where you can go to find out more information about the show to see all of the guests that we have on and also to find out about the giveaways that we have many of our guests have gifted us something and you can enter our competitions via Instagram so just go to be curious podcast to find out more I’m your host Louise Halton and until next time thank you so much to Toby and stay curious guys [Music]