Team 1

blueGENES

Team Members:
Johnpaul Ciccosanti
Margaret Cook
Spencer Hauxhurst
Nikolai Shteinman
Michelle Tieu

Team Mentor:

Dr. Benjamin Bartelle - Arizona State University

YouTube Link:
View the video link below before joining the zoom meeting

Zoom Link:

https://asu.zoom.us/j/9966667648

Abstract

The vast majority of drugs produced under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are classified as biologics, generally defined as engineered proteins. Leveraging synthetic biology to create natural producers of these biologic pharmaceuticals is both sustainable and financially appealing. Large companies have adopted these “microbial factories” to produce drugs at a fraction of the cost. In doing so, they have large amounts of recombinant systems that require regulation of gene expression throughout the process. However, the current methods for doing so in an industrial setting are typically chemical in nature and are expensive, difficult, and time-consuming. Optogenetic promoters are activated and inactivated by light alone, providing an effective, inexpensive, and scalable option. There is existing technology that allows for regulation using blue light, but a lack of promoters responding to multiple wavelengths limits the applications, especially for an industrial setting. We have employed multiple steps in the iterative product design process to highlight the consumer constraints that will dictate our product metrics. Namely, we have identified that the industrial context underlying our product requires our final design to be automated, capable of producing multispectral promoters, and is in line with all control standards. Thus, we propose a directed evolution approach for the creation and optimization of promoters that respond to additional wavelengths. We will model our device after an existing technology, but will implement additional LEDs to enable its use for our purposes. Ultimately, we will have created two critical components: (1) an automated, multispectral hardware platform for the directed evolution of (2) a suite of optogenetic promoters for use in industrial applications.