Week 1 HW: Final Project Ideas

(1) What you would like to biomanufacture and why? The compound I’m considering as a target for biomanufacturing is Shinorine, a mycosporine-like amino acid, that’s produced by alga and it’s in consist of UV absorbing properties. It has a great potential for mass production by fermentation for commercial purposes, and the shift from conventional methods of cultivation and harvest toward biomanufacturing, make it a greener and more sustainable alternative. The reason I choose this compound comes from my background in marine biotechnology, and the whole Idea that we can leverage environmental benefits without causing ecological harm is one of my objectives.

(2) What living system would you use? I think microalgae like C.vulgaris or some cyanobacter could be a good match, because of their similarity in pathways, and other merits like the rapid reproduction rate of C.vulgaris also could be a boost for scaling and mass production. Although, it could cause some difficulties in designing and the behavior of the organism, as it’s not a model organism (I guess), in that case maybe E.coli K-12 strain would be a good choice.

(3) How would you use automation? I’m not actually familiar to the concept of using the automations for lab work, but based on some research I’ve conducted, it seems Opentrons liquid -handling robots could be a real contributor as it able to handle the wet lab techniques and gene manipulation without error and gives a boost to DBTL procedures. Besides we can integrate the results of genome scale metabolic network analysis, and utilize this computational tool to optimize the fermentation process and the final yield.

(4) How much would you need to make, and how long would it take? I cannot be sure about my estimation, but considering the yield of 1 g/l, a pilot scale production for 1000 users and 3% w/w of shinorine into formulation, requires 10 kg of products per year (without calculating downstream process efficiency rate). At 1 g/l and considering a 1m³ photobioreactor, and a 72 h/batch, It requires 10 batches and approximately a month.

  1. What don’t you know yet? I don’t have a clue about the actual achievable titer and the costs of production. Also, the downstream processing could be a challenge. Another concern is legal issues with patents, I’m not familiar with the regulatory on biomanufacturing these types of compounds.