Team:Lund
It all starts here
The rapid development of biotechnology has allowed the utilization of microorganisms in the sustainable manufacturing of essential products used in our day to day lives. The demand for more energy efficient technologies is increasing as society places more emphasis on the environment. Our project revolves around the co-expression of a bacterial hemoglobin as a means to increase oxygen utilization which in turn improves the yields of these products.
Oxygen is the Issue
One of the most common bottlenecks in biomanufacturing are oxygen deprivations. Cells are often grown into high cell densities to optimize the products yields. This can in turn limit oxygen availability, resulting in slower growth and undesired fermentation products.
A Very Special
Hemoglobin
Vitreoscilla is a strictly aerobic organism which, during oxygen deprivations, expresses Vitreoscilla hemoglobin (VHb). This defense mechanism allows the bacterium to survive in very hypoxic conditions. Its hemoglobin has been found to have very useful biotechnical applications in combating oxygen limitations.
Our Project
Our project investigates the protein productivity based on the degree of VHb expression. Low VHb expression will not do the job while too high starves the cell resources. The answer lays somewhere in between. Find out how (Link to design).
Modeling
We modeled cell growth and designed human hemoglobin mutants. Read more about our novel approaches.
Scaling up
Learn about how our project can be used to improve pre-existing biomanufacturing processes.
Practices
Our main HP contributions this year has been to provide the iGEM community with adequate management strategies as a means to improve their projects.
