(Monday’s/9.30H/CEB anfitheatre)
Diana Mendes, Development of molecular and enzymatic kits for the detection of E. coli and total coliform in water samples
The drinking water is one of the main sources of infectious diseases. So, it is of major importance to keep a good microbiological water quality monitoring. The need for more rapid, sensitive and specific tests is essential; not only for water industry, but for a better public health safety. Therefore, detection of microbial indicators of potential pathogens in water is the solution for the prevention and recognition of problems related to human health and safety. The main purpose of my PhD is, in collaboration with a Portuguese company, to develop commercial kits for the detection of the extensively used as indicator organisms: Escherichia coli and total coliforms. In this talk, I will present my results on the development of an enzymatic detection kit that has already been tested on drinking, river and sea water.
Pedro Evangelista, Metabolic and Bioprocess Engineering Approaches for Strain Optimization using Evolutionary Computation Techniques
One major issue in industrial bioprocesses is to optimize the production of a relevant compound, taking into account both the organism metabolic capabilities and the bioreactor operational conditions. Traditionally, bioprocess optimization is made by tuning certain operational parameters or by manipulating directly the metabolic pathways (e.g. estimating the best knockouts using Flux Balance Analysis), without accounting for the performance of the modified strain in the bioreactor. In fact, it is hard to optimize simultaneously the organism metabolic pathways and the reactor conditions using current methodologies. This work details the developed Evolutionary Computation algorithms in order to address these issues.
