Team:Tec-Chihuahua
Team:Cologne-Duesseldorf
Designing a Customizable Synthetic Cell Compartment Toolbox
Synthetic organisms provide a wide range of applications with the potential to tackle
the biggest challenges humanity faces. Their creation is therefore one of the major
goals in synthetic biology. Many breakthroughs have been achieved in the last
decade, however, the creation of a fully synthetic cell is yet a milestone to reach for.
A common approach tries to build up artificial cells from scratch, whereas we want to
start by engineering artificial compartments through orthogonalization. For designing
these new compartments we plan to establish an open source toolbox accessible to
the community at large. This will make it possible to boot up a compartment perfectly
tailored for a specific application, which will enable cheaper and more efficient
production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals, or high value chemicals.
Real world application
By integrating enzymes or biosynthetic pathways into semi-permeable organelles we
gain higher concentrations of enzymes and metabolites and provide a basis for the
ideal operation of specialized enzymes. Furthermore, toxic or unstable intermediates
can be sustained and naturally incompatible reactions can take place
simultaneously.
We have chosen yeast peroxisomes as our chassis for designing this synthetic organelle, which are very resistant, have a useful import mechanism and are expendable under optimal conditions. As a proof of concept for our compartimentation strategy we intend to establish the Nootkatone pathway inside the peroxisome. Nootkatone is a natural compound found inside the peel of the grapefruit, which gives it its characteristic taste and smell. In addition to that, Nootkatone is a natural repellent for mosquitoes and ticks and is already being commercially used and industrially manufactured. Unfortunately, the production costs for it are extremely high, because it either must be extracted from the peels of hundred of thousands of grapefruits or synthesized inside of yeast. The problem here is, that the Nootkatone pathway is toxic for yeast and the efficiency is rather low. Here is where our compartmentation comes into play, as we plan to implement the hole pathway into the modified peroxisome.
