Team:Macquarie Australia/Description

Abstract

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.