Team:Sao Carlos-Brazil
The Sao Carlos-Brazil Team presents ASTROSHIELD
In order to establish a human colony on Mars, several technical challenges need to be overcome.
One of them is the need for constant food production for its residents, or the colony would only survive for a short time. Mars is one of the best destinations for humanity to settle down, but the planet is dominated by a high incidence of radiation.
To produce food on a planet as extreme as this, we plan to apply synthetic biology tools to engineer a fermenting yeast that is able to amass melanin on its surface to become resistant to ultraviolet radiation.
This type of technology could also be used to improve fermentative processes that are already carried out on Earth considering sugar and alcohol factories lose a big part of their yeast due to chemical processes of sterilization. Therefore, the implementation of UV sterilization using radiation resistant yeast would promote the saving of thousands of dollars to this industry since this process would only eliminate the contaminant microorganisms.