University of Copenhagen iGEM 2018 Team proudly presents

PharMARSy

A Simple Pharmaceutical Protein Production & Purification System on Mars

"In order to truly explore space, astronauts will need the capability to produce needed medications during their mission" - Virginia Wotring (Adjunct Associate Professor, Center for Space Medicine and Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, Baylor College of Medicine).

The race to the Red Planet has started and colonization could be in the near future! To make the colonization of Mars possible the first people will of course need to be able to survive and be self-sustaining in a place far from Earth. Astronauts will need access to medicine, but bringing it from the Earth is unsustainable. With our project we aim to make a Portable Protein Production and Purification System that will solve the astronauts need for pharmaceutical protein by letting them produce their own medicine on site - no need to depend on the supply from Earth!

The Protein Production and Purification System hijacks the disease-causing bacterial injectisome (Type III secretion system) that functions as a molecular syringe to inject a specific protein, freshly made from a microbial factory, through a biomimetic membrane and into a collection chamber ready for use! PharMARSy allows for both production and purification of the protein - all in one step.

Oh! the PharMARSy system works on Earth too, and we can produce many other pure proteins!