Week 1 HW: Final Project Ideas

Final Project Idea

1 What you would like to biomanufacture and why?

I would like to have a better idea of how well biomanufacturing would scale in costs for producing a colourant with similar light wavelength to that of a common synthetic dye. As the world continues to manage pollution produced from mass-produced synthetic dyes, biomanufacturing may provide an alternative means of producing dyes at an industrial scale. Ever since I’ve read about the prospect of creating colour through biological systems, I’ve wondered whether biomanufacturing could provide a practical alternative.

I think my experiment would go something like this….

1. Identify a common synthetic dye. Assess how much 1g of the colourant would appear in a predetermined volume of water (we’ll now call this a standard volume. eg. 1cm3). Record the hue and saturation values.
2. Identify a coloured protein – perhaps not a fluorescent one – that would have a similar hue to the synthetic dye.
3. Design a cell-based approach to generating the coloured protein. Assume it would involve inserting genes into a E. coli that would produce the protein. Estimate the mass and other costs for generating enough colourant to provide a similar hue and saturation value in the standard volume to the synthetic dye used in Step 1.
4. Design a cell-free system approach to generating the coloured protein. Assume it would involve using a cell-free system to mass-produce the protein. Estimate the mass and other costs for generating enough colourant to provide a similar hue and saturation value in the standard volume to the synthetic dye used in Step 1.
5. Compare approaches, quantitatively and qualitatively
6. Make some assessment that would rank them according to various themes such as cost and environmental impact.

2 What living system would you use?

I would use two living systems: a cell-free system and a bacterial one, both trying to produce the same protein.

3 How would you use automation?

I would use tools like Benchling to identify the protein. And then I would likely need to design some sort of OpenTrons program that would make each solution of colourant and then find some way to measure hue and saturation.

4 How much would you need to make, and how long would it take?

(a) How much?

I don’t know how much, but I suspect there may be some sources of existing dye performance characteristics that I could use to provide an estimate. I think biomanufacturing would not be perfect, so I would probably need to research what factors could influence how concentrated the biomanufactured mixes would be.

(b) How long?

I don’t know – see (a)

5 What don’t you know yet?

I’m familiar with some fluorescent proteins but I’m not familiar with coloured proteins that are not fluorescent. I don’t know which standard synthetic dye to pick – I might even choose the protein first and then choose the synthetic dye with the closest hue. I don’t know how well the biomanufactured colourants would adhere to surfaces. I don’t know how to estimate yields of either cell-free-based dyes or cell-based dyes.

Final Project