https://pages.htgaa.org/2026b/luz-etcheverry-boneo/week-01-hw-project-ideas/index.html(See references below) Question 1: Industrial natural rubber (cis-1,4-polyisoprene) production today depends almost entirely on the Hevea tree (1,3). I would like to biomanufacture rubber in engineered cells instead. Natural rubber is a high-volume commodity whose performance petrochemical synthetic rubber still can’t fully match: its long chain length and co-produced proteins and lipids give it a resilience, tear/fatigue resistance, and strain-induced crystallization that keep it essential where failure isn’t an option. For example, commercial and military aircraft tires are made almost entirely from natural rubber because synthetic rubber cannot perform as well. Natural rubber appears in more than 40,000 products: tires, hoses, medical gloves, toys, clothing. The U.S. alone consumed roughly 1.78 billion pounds in 2020, and the EU has listed natural rubber as a critical raw material since 2017, one of its few biotic entries (2,3).Hugoen