About this Research Topic

Background

Exploiting and harnessing microbial biomass in aqueous environments presents a timely means of meeting pressing and emerging societal challenges. For example, the United Nation has set out 17 Strategic Development Goals highlighting priority areas to improve health and wellbeing that requires the commensurate need to innovate in order to unlock solutions. Moreover, there is a need to efficiently produce higher yields of food at lower costs, without requiring arable land, along with climate-proofing these vital resources. Bioreactor-based solutions have desirable qualities such as proven culture-based processes, ease of operation, safety compliance, non-toxicity, and the potential to be produced in large numbers at a consistent grade. There is growing interest in the use of this technology to inform food sustainability, improve supply chains and circularity (the bioeconomy), along with the potential for using biobased properties from foods and waste products that align with the “One-Health” concept. The use of bioreactors can also be used as a novel toolbox for informing and modelling the potential impact of climate change variance on local ecosystems, including biodiversity. The aforementioned are highlighted in this topic.

In recent years, researchers have been more interested in adopting bioreactor-based fermentation methods to utilize microbial biomass for social advantages. As a result, the use of dried and wet microbial biomass for industrial uses has increased significantly. This landless microbial production system has the ability to supplement and replace farmland systems in natural processes like aquaculture feed production, biodiesel feedstock, waste treatment and recycling, and bioremediation. The development of next-generation bioreactor approaches has resulted in higher biomass yields and significantly improved biomass quality, resulting in the production of a safe, environmentally friendly microbial biomass capable of addressing complex circularity challenges through metabolic activities. However, there is a scarcity of information on how bioreactor-produced microbial biomass can be used in the environment from 2021 onwards. As a result, the title of this Research Topic, "The Value of Microbial Bioreactors to Meet Challenges in the Circular Bioeconomy," is both unique and contemporary, as it highlights the most recent scientific and technological advances in the field of next-generation bioreactor-based biomass research. Both the methods and the bio-based products are renewable, environmentally benign, and circular (reusable, recyclable, or degradable). Furthermore, such innovation has the ability to replace fossil fuels while also delivering new and enhanced outcomes such as resource use, water efficiency, and energy efficiency.

This Research Topic welcomes submissions related to the topic of the dynamic use of bioreactors to produce microbial biomass to meet pressing environmental and bioeconomy needs. It aims to encompass themes such as, but not limited to:

- Applications of algae, fungi, and bacterial bioreactor-derived biomass in the energy sectors
- Safety and environmental impact of bioreactor-derived biomass entering the ecosystem
- Synergism of single or double microorganisms to boost biomass yield using bioreactors
- Incorporation of microbial biomass to improve wastewater treatment processes and water quality
- Sustaining and disruptive approaches to meeting circularity challenges including the use of dried or wet microbial biomass derived from a bioreactor
- The use of microbial biomass as biochar and its applications in soil therapy
- Bioreactor-produced natural bioindicators to inform climate change events and sustainable food production
- Use of bioreactors to simulate and future proof dynamic cultivation systems such as sustainable food production including aquaculture
- Novel approaches to implicitly applying and simulating environmental stress conditions to producing high-value bio-based products
- To simulate, and replicate, complex aqueous environments that replicate biodiverse, natural ecosystems including tools to monitor fluctuations associated with climate change
- To impose stress conditions influencing microbial metabolism sequentially and simultaneously for informing food safety, production and toxicology
- To exploit the use of bioreactors as smart tools to inform the development of -OMICs, bioinformatics, and digital transformation of special cultivation systems



The Topic Editors declare no competing interests related to affiliations to private companies, founding a private company, receiving any grants from a private company, holding shares of a private company, and/or holding patents.

Keywords: Bioreactor, Biomass, Fermentation, Sustainability, Bioremediation, Future-Proofing, Disruptive Innovation, UN Sustainable Development Goals, Resource Utilization

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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