Team:UCSC/Description

Home

Team

• Meet the Team
• Collaborations
• Partnership
• Attributions
• Sponsors

Project

• Overview
• Design
• Applied Design
• Experiments
• Results
• Demonstrate
• Notebook

Human Practices

• Outreach
• Public Engagement
• Safety

Notebook

• Weekly Overview
• Protocols

Parts

• Overview
• Improvement

Judging Contact

Description

PoPPY

This year’s project seeks to address the global lack of family planning services. The luxury to choose when, and if, to start a family directly affects one’s ability to pursue an education, sports, a career, etc. Our hope is to localize contraception production and increase availability in developing nations. Progesterone, a hormone naturally produced by women, can be used to suppress ovulation and act as a form of contraception. The yeast strain Yarrowia Lipolytica (Y. Lipolytica), a generally recognized as safe (GRAS) organism by the FDA, has an advanced genetic toolbox and can be easily grown in most environments. We will engineer Y. Lipolytica to produce progesterone with the goal of creating a product that can be used within the home to grow one’s own contraceptives.