The main focus of our project was to grow lactic acid bacteria and yeast together. We came up with two main specific applications: use in the brewing industry and increase carbon flux to the production of lactic acid to make PLA. Each of these uses brought its own set of questions that we tried to answer over the summer:
Would brewers be comfortable making and selling this co-culture of LAB and yeast?
How do you get approval, nationally and internationally, for a genetically modified organism?
Is it possible to release a genetically modified organism into the wild?
Are each of these applications feasible and important?
We talked to brewers about their experience brewing with multiple species of yeast and if they would sell it. A brewer, Matt Riggs, stated that consumers will be wary of it, so he wouldn't sell it right now, but he personally would try it. He suggested targeting industrial fields in the short-term and the brewing field in the future. Taking his comments and suggestions we geared our project/co-culture toward industrial fields, like using it to create valuable products such as lactic acid. Also, at the CABBI annual retreat we talked to professors working on energy conversion. They gave us suggestions on how to improve the production of these products, such growing LAB in non-aerated conditions as well different combinations of media, which we implemented into our project directly. We started growing our cultures in non-aerated condition (100 RPM) and used a combination of YPD and M17 instead of just one type of media.
