Äio, TFTAK Team Up for Efficient Microbial Oil Production

Äio, an Estonian biotechnology start-up, has partnered with research organization TFTAK to develop efficient microbial oil production. The two companies have received €1.94 million in funding through Estonia's Applied Research Programme for their three-year project, DigiFoundry 2.0.

The project builds on the results of Äio and TFTAK's previous collaboration, which ran from 2023 to 2026. This first project focused on creating a platform for automated microbial strain design and establishing a Design-Build-Test-Learn cycle to accelerate the development of microorganisms capable of producing specialized fats through precision fermentation.

Äio said that its company data shows that its fermentation process can reduce land use by up to 97% and water consumption by up to 90% compared with conventional production methods. Petri-Jaan Lahtyee, co-founder and COO of Äio, stated: 'Our goal is to make microbial oil production not only sustainable, but also highly efficient and economically competitive at an industrial scale.'

TFTAK will continue its contribution by providing synthetic biology expertise, precision fermentation, and bioprocess development. Steven van der Hoek, scientific lead at TFTAK, said: 'By integrating synthetic biology, fermentation, and digital tools, we can generate much more information from every development cycle and use that knowledge to make the next cycle better.'