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Team:TU Munich
From 2012.igem.org
TUM-Brew: iGEM's first and finest SynBio Beer
The TU Munich iGEM Team engineers Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also known as baker's yeast, in order to lay the foundations for a new generation of functional foods with nutritionally valuable ingredients.
As an example, for iGEM’s first “SynBio Beer” the compounds xanthohumol (anticancerogenic), limonene (limeflavor), caffeine (stimulant) as well as the thaumatin (protein sweetener) were chosen to demonstrate the spectrum of possibilities to complement traditional foods or beverages.
The metabolic pathways for these substances were converted to genetic BioBricks. Using the shuttle vector pYES2, which was adapted to the iGEM standard, transient transfection and expression in yeast were achieved. The gene products were subsequently characterized and their biosynthetic activities investigated.
Constitutive, ethanol-inducible and light-switchable promoter systems were developed to individually regulate the expression of these gene cassettes. By combining these BioBricks our team has been able to brew iGEM’s first and finest SynBio Beer.
