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!
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<h1>Abstract</h1>
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poteins need to be synthesised and purified for use in therapeutic and industrial applications. At present, this process is costly, time-consuming and operationally difficult. We aim to address these challenges through the formation of vesicles within a familiar and ubiquitous expression vector, Escherichia coli. These vesicles allow for the sequestration of desired proteins and hence enable simplified, bulk purification via chromatography or centrifugation. Similarly, enzymes and small molecules also present the opportunity to produce or process natural products and refine typically cytotoxic compounds. To address these issues, the chlorophyll biosynthesis genes will be introduced into E. coli, and it is these genes that have been identified as the source of prolamellar bodies (PLB) in photosynthetic organisms. The formation of vesicles within E. coli is novel research, never attempted in prokaryotes before and would act as a toolkit to address the multitude of issues mentioned above.
poteins need to be synthesised and purified for use in therapeutic and industrial applications. At present, this process is costly, time-consuming and operationally difficult. We aim to address these challenges through the formation of vesicles within a familiar and ubiquitous expression vector, Escherichia coli. These vesicles allow for the sequestration of desired proteins and hence enable simplified, bulk purification via chromatography or centrifugation. Similarly, enzymes and small molecules also present the opportunity to produce or process natural products and refine typically cytotoxic compounds. To address these issues, the chlorophyll biosynthesis genes will be introduced into E. coli, and it is these genes that have been identified as the source of prolamellar bodies (PLB) in photosynthetic organisms. The formation of vesicles within E. coli is novel research, never attempted in prokaryotes before and would act as a toolkit to address the multitude of issues mentioned above.
