The biggest problematic of this century will lie in how we treat our planet earth. A change of mindset towards resourcefulness as well as peacefully cohabiting will lead to a restructuring of biotechnological processes into a more ecological efficient form. We want to reach this goal through usage of a CO2-consuming substrate for cultivation of production strains. Hereby, we aim to use phototrophic microalgae, making classic cultivation substrate such as glucose or other substrates obsolete. With microalgae biomass being a byproduct or even waste product of some industry branches such as the dietary supplement industry, it is easily accessible and can be used instantly. Furthermore, with the reduction of the usage of classic substrates we enable the usage of arable area for other purposes such as food cultivation or preservation of natural habitat such as the rain forest.
The second project part consists out of optimizing protein production of a very promising bacterial strain (vibrio natriegens) for biotechnological processes. Hereby, the intracellular tRNA availability in V. natriegens will be increased in order to increase the efficiency of recombinant protein expression in this fast-growing bacterium. For the last two years, V. natriegens was a very popular field of study for different iGEM teams. Through the usage of systems biology and bioinformatics we plan to understand and optimize importance of tRNA usage of this very promising organism in regards for optimal protein production.
The project iGEM
The “international Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition is an international competition in the field of synthetic biology. Our team consists of 20 dedicated students under the supervision of mister apl. Prof. Siemann-Herzberg and mister Jun.-Prof Voß from the institute of biochemical engineering (IBVT) as well as PHD-students from the IBVtR and institute for microbiology. The first iGEM competition was in 2003 carried out by the iGEM foundation, with an annual repetition of the competition carried out by the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Cambridge. During this competition groups of students all around the world carry out their own research with the aim to improve and aid the people of the world through usage of synthetic biology. Last year our iGEM Team 2018 was able to win a gold medal, a milestone for our relatively young iGEM group which we want to repeat this year as well. Currently the competition consists of 5 000 participants coming from more than 42 countries.