Dr Isabella Casini

Isabella specialises in employing systems biology and metabolic modelling for advancing the bioeconomy.

We are optimizing the production of dairy proteins in collaboration with the biotech company All G. Precision fermentation enables the microbial production of high-value nutritional proteins, increasing sustainability within the agricultural sector. To enhance this process, we leverage systems and synthetic biology and metabolic modelling to characterize microbial strains and optimize bioprocess conditions. Isabella recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Biochemical Engineering at the University of Stuttgart (Germany), where she worked on a confidential industry collaboration. Her project focused on generating a product relevant to the food and medical sectors while capturing waste carbon. She applied metabolomics and metabolic modelling to identify bottlenecks in the production pathway. In 2022, Isabella earned her PhD from the University of Tübingen (Germany) in the Environmental Biotechnology Group. Her doctoral research explored the biological conversion of hydrogen (derived from surplus renewable energy) and waste carbon dioxide into methane for integration into the natural gas grid. She conducted gas fermentation experiments and employed systems biology tools, including genome-scale metabolic modelling, and pan-genomics, -transcriptomics, and -proteomics, to assess the performance of various methanogens. Her work advanced the use of methanogens for sustainable energy generation and storage. Before her PhD, Isabella obtained a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Science from Smith College (USA). Her honors thesis involved developing a 2D thermodynamic model in MATLAB to simulate the internal dynamics of a biomass torrefier. The torrefaction process converts waste woody biomass into a lighter, cleaner, and longer-lasting fuel, enhancing energy access for remote or decentralized communities.

Key Publications

Casini, I., McCubbin, T., Esquivel-Elizondo, S., Luque, G.G., Evseeva, D., Fink, C., Beblawy, S., Youngblut, N.D., Aristilde, L., Huson, D.H. and Dräger, A., (2023). An integrated systems biology approach reveals differences in formate metabolism in the genus Methanothermobacter. Iscience, 26(10).

Xia, P.F., Casini, I., Schulz, S., Klask, C.M., Angenent, L.T. and Molitor, B., (2020). Reprogramming acetogenic bacteria with CRISPR-targeted base editing via deamination. ACS Synthetic Biology, 9(8), pp.2162-2171.

Angenent, L.T., Casini, I., Schröder, U., Harnisch, F. and Molitor, B., (2024). Electrical-energy storage into chemical-energy carriers by combining or integrating electrochemistry and biology. Energy & Environmental Science.

Heffernan, J.K., Valgepea, K., de Souza Pinto Lemgruber, R., Casini, I., Plan, M., Tappel, R., Simpson, S.D., Köpke, M., Nielsen, L.K. and Marcellin, E., (2020). Enhancing CO2-valorization using Clostridium autoethanogenum for sustainable fuel and chemicals production. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, 8, p.204.

Klask, C.M., Jäger, B., Casini, I., Angenent, L.T. and Molitor, B., (2022). Genetic evidence reveals the indispensable role of the rseC gene for autotrophy and the importance of a functional electron balance for nitrate reduction in Clostridium ljungdahlii. Frontiers in Microbiology, 13, p.887578.