Difference between revisions of "Team:Macquarie Australia"

This year Team Macquarie is working on a modified strain of Escherichia coli to produce Chives — no, not the herb! — Chives is actually an acronym for Chlorophyll-Induced Vesicles. Previous reports have indicated that during the chlorophyll biosynthesis pathway, crystalline structures amass when cells are grown in the dark. When light is shone onto them, they form vesicles — a completely isolated environment in the cell! This opens up whole new avenues for the medical field, food, and other industries as these vesicles provide a segregated space to produce cytotoxic products, or products which the cell would ordinarily metabolise. This novel system of artificial compartmentalisation is certain to revolutionize the world! As such, we will first incorporate chlorophyll a into E. coli and aim to produce these biomolecular compartments (which we have dubbed Chives) — the first of their kind!