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<h3><span class="fa mr-2 fa-cogs" aria-hidden="true"></span><a href="https://2019.igem.org/Team:ShanghaiFLS_China/demonstrate">Demonstrate</a></h3> | <h3><span class="fa mr-2 fa-cogs" aria-hidden="true"></span><a href="https://2019.igem.org/Team:ShanghaiFLS_China/demonstrate">Demonstrate</a></h3> | ||
− | <p> | + | <p>When we asked professors and industrial leaders whether our project would be successful in the industry, they were not optimistic. However, due to constraints in our experimental settings, we were not able to demonstrate through experiments how our designs would work. This problem led us to construct a model, modifying existent formulas from literary works, to demonstrate this possibility. The rate of oxygen consumption and heat emission are two main factors to be considered in industrial processes, and our project mainly looks at methanol consumption. When we looked at the three factors separately in three models below, they all prove adequate possibilities of industrial production.</p> |
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Revision as of 12:45, 20 October 2019
Experiments
The Optimization of the Metabolic Pathways of P. pastoris in Medicine Production via Methanol Fermentation
Methanol is a major byproduct of the coal industry. Engineered Pichia pastoris GS115, a strain of methylotrophic yeast, is capable of converting methanol into medical compounds such as the insulin precursor and lovastatin. However, in such P. pastoris, the metabolism of methanol is highly specific and results in significant oxygen consumption and heat generation, which have limited its industrial applications. We aim to address this issue by improving the methanol conversion rate in P. pastoris by re-engineering its homogeneous circuits expressing the transcription factors that would up-regulate the expression of AOX1, the protein allowing it to metabolize methanol. Through our multiple rounds of experiments, we eventually acquired strains that are capable of yielding an up to 20% increase in total GFP production per gram methanol compared to the wildtype. Based on our modeling, such strains should have an (percent) decrease in heat generation per unit product and a (percent) decrease in oxygen consumption compared to the wildtype.