Dr. Neda Aničić has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023). The project, under the acronym BioPesTY, will be conducted at the University of Copenhagen under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Sotirios Kampranis.

The project's aim is to develop a sustainable biotechnological solution for the production of biopesticides, pyrethrins, originated from the plant Tanacetum cinerariifolium (Dalmatian chrysanthemum). To achieve this, in the BioPesTY project, Dr. Aničić will develop a strain of baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) engineered to produce pyrethrins in a scalable and sustainable manner. Using a multidisciplinary approach engaging biochemistry, transcriptomics, and synthetic biology principles, the only missing step of pyrethrin biosynthesis will be identified, and the whole pathway will be reconstructed in yeast, able to convert simple sugar into human-safe biopesticides.