The Handbook of Polyhydroxyalkanoates: Microbial Biosynthesis and Feedstocks

The first volume of the "Handbook of Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA): Microbial Biosynthesis and Feedstocks" focusses on feedstock aspects, enzymology, metabolism and genetic engineering of PHA biosynthesis. It addresses better understanding the mechanisms of PHA biosynthesis in scientific terms and profiting from this understanding in order to enhance PHA biosynthesis in bio-technological terms and in terms of PHA microstructure. It further discusses making PHA competitive for outperforming established petrol-based plastics on industrial scale and obstacles for market penetration of PHA. Aimed at professionals and graduate students in Polymer (plastic) industry, wastewater treatment plants, food industry, biodiesel industry, this book

Covers the intracellular on-goings in PHA-accumulating bacteria

Assesses diverse feedstocks to be used as carbon source for PHA production including current knowledge on PHA biosynthesis starting from inexpensive waste feedstocks

Summarizes recent relevant results dealing with PHA production from various organic by-products

Presents the key elements to understand and fine-tune the microstructure and sequence-controlled molecular architecture of PHA co-polyesters

Discusses the use of CO-rich syngas, sourced from various organic waste materials, for PHA biosynthesis

Martin Koller was awarded his PhD degree by Graz University of Technology, Austria, for his thesis on polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) production from dairy surplus streams which was enabled by the EU-project WHEYPOL (“Dairy industry waste as source for sustainable polymeric material production”), supervised by Gerhart Braunegg, one of the most eminent PHA pioneers. As senior researcher, he worked on bio-mediated PHA production, encompassing development of continuous and discontinuous fermentation processes, and novel downstream processing techniques for sustainable PHA recovery. His research focused on cost-efficient PHA production from surplus materials by bacteria and haloarchaea and, to a minor extent, to the development for PHA for biomedical use. He currently holds more than 70 Web-of-science listed articles in high ranked scientific journals (h-index 23), authored twelve chapters in scientific books, edited three scientific books and four journal special issues on PHA, gave plenty of invited and plenary lectures at scientific conferences, and supports the editorial teams of several distinguished journals. Moreover, Martin Koller coordinated the EU-FP7 project ANIMPOL (“Biotechnological conversion of carbon containing wastes for eco-efficient production of high added value products”), which, in close cooperation between academia and industry, investigated the conversion of animal processing industry´s waste streams towards structurally diversified PHA and follow-up products. In addition to PHA exploration, he was also active in microalgal research and in biotechnological production of various marketable compounds from renewables by yeasts, chlorophyte, bacteria, archaea, fungi or lactobacilli. At the moment, Martin Koller is active as research manager and external supervisor for PHA-related projects.