Sustainable Biomaterials

Sustainable coloured biomaterials can be created from structurally coloured bacteria.
Hoekmine BV is performing strain improvement and process development to create low cost colourants.
These can be considered a disruptive innovation for the dye industries. The colours are intense and non-bleaching and do not contain petroleum products or heavy metals. Dye processes are inefficient, and waste water and energy, plus create pollution.
Scaling to produce salable quantities in fermenters is our goal.

Our stable structurally coloured biomaterial derived from bacteria.

Biosensors
and reporter technology

The PROBLEM
is that we live in a complex environment with many threats to our health. Some are obvious, some are hidden. technologies are expensive and only available to experts rather than individuals.

Our SOLUTION,
COLOUR-HOEK provides CUSTOMERS (the general public and any organisation) the opportunity to monitor volatile threats cheaply using a simple disposable set of biosensor strains for detection and using the camera on a mobile phone for data capture with an APP for analysis. The innovation for the COLOUR-HOEK product lies within the unique readout system – intense colour changes in bacteria that work well without special illumination. This readout is from structural colour. Imagine the feathers of a peacock catching the light, this is very close to the way the bacterial system generates colour. However, unlike the peacock it is possible to make biosensors with the bacteria that are both low cost and can be fine-tuned to detect specific chemicals. In doing so, COLOUR-HOEK promotes a safer environment.

Structural coloration of Flavobacterium IR1 can be used as a reporter system that changes colour to detect indicator of environmental condition. Here we show four strains engineered (1 to 4) with different sensitivities to a sulphated polymer with the top row being without stimuli (-) and the bottom row (+) showing different colours from the same four strains depending on the stimuli.

Sustainable Biomaterials

Biosensorsand reporter technology

Biosensors
and reporter technology