Phase II

The purpose of Phase II is to produce a set of biobricks that properly produce the proteins that wil be put together to react and turn zeaxanthin into the final saffron components. Thus, this phase deals with expression of ZCD and UGTCS2 and characterization of those parts. In addition, to prepare for Phase III, we have done some basic characterization of crocin, which will be used for characterization in Phase III when optimizing the production of safranal and crocin.

We created a standard curve of crocin in water, in order to calculate the extinction coefficient. Using the trendline below, by the Beer-Lambert law, the extinction coefficient of crocin in water is 15258 M^-1 cm^-1.