Project Idea: Biofuels

Stanford iGEM 2009

Presentation by:Suzie

+Robert

3/4/09

Biofuels Introduction

• What makes a good biofuel?!?!

• Environmentally friendly

• Mass production - CHEAP!

• Chemically:

• High energy density

• Low water solubility

Biofuels Introduction

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Biofuels Introduction

• As for synthetic biology applications…

• Most use E. coli or S. cerevisiae as a host to:

1. Engineer amino acid biosynthesis

2. Engineer fatty acid pathways

3. Engineer isoprenoid pathways

Dr. James Liao

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Dr. James Liao

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3-Methyl-1-Butanol

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2-Methyl-1-Butanol

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Dr. James Liao

Our Project

• We would need to engineer a separate amino acid pathway to produce a possible biofuel

• EX: Serine or alanine• Need to ID enzymes that can make this

possible:• For Dr. Liao, it was KIVD (yeast) and

ADH6 (lactococcus lactis)

Five Possible Sub-projects

1. Synthesizers (constructing the pathway)

2. Riboregulators (controlling knockouts)

3. Modelers (Modeling for bottlenecks)

4. Bottleneckers (Building expression system)

5. ANY OF THE ABOVE