The University of Amsterdam (UvA) participates in ENGICOIN via the research group of Molecular Microbial Physiology of the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences (SILS-MMP) led by Filipe Branco dos Santos. This group works towards building a sustainable, fair, and healthy future through innovative research that examines complex societal challenges. This group combines advanced expertise on both modelling and experimental physiology of cyanobacteria, with its application to the development of photosynthetic cell factories capable of converting CO2 directly into products of interest (e.g. lactic acid). This group stands out among the pioneers in the development of novel cultivation and screening systems for photoautotrophs, which are adopted in ENGICOIN.
UvA has a primary role in WP4 in the metabolic engineering of the Synechocystis (MF1). There it is responsible for engineering and screening lactate-overproducing strains and along with increasing its product tolerance. UvA has a major role in WP9 on the metabolic modelling of Synechocystis to ensure high-level production of lactate.