Team:SUIS Alpha Shanghai/Description
Description
- In food processing, the repeated heating of oils could result in high contents of malondialdehyde (MDA), a highly mutagenic end product of lipid peroxidation. MDA has the ability to react with deoxyadenosine and deoxyguanosine in DNA, forming DNA adducts, meaning it is potentially carcinogenic. MDA can be broken down in a pathway involving the enzymes aldehyde dehydrogenase and malonate-semialdehyde dehydrogenase, which produces the safe product acetyl-CoA with the release of CO2.Through industrial refining, used cooking oil containing high levels of MDA can be transformed into products used in the energy and chemical industries. However, in Asia, there have been several cases where this used oil has been recycled back into the food industry for human consumption. Preventive steps towards making sure such oil does not reenter the food industry are often ineffective. The ingestion of high contents of lipid peroxidation products like MDA, are related to several pathological processes including cancer, diabetes, liver diseases, and cardiovascular diseases. One pathway of MDA metabolism involves metabolic action by enzymes to form acetate. Acetate is the main source of acetyl-CoA, which is further broken down to CO2 and H2O in the citric acid cycle in aerobic organisms.Our project aims to produce E. coli which is capable of safely breaking down the potentially carcinogenic MDA in recycled cooking oil into safe byproducts. This process could form part of standard protocols for the treatment of waste oil in industrial oil refinery plants, with the aim of protecting consumers from the illegal activity of using recycled oil for human consumption.
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