Team:Uppsala/Description
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This year iGEM Uppsala is Crafting Crocin. Crocin is an apocarotenoid (organic pigment) found in saffron, extracted from Crocus sativus. Crocin, crocetin, zeaxanthin and other organic compounds in the crocin pathway, are responsible for saffron's beautiful crimson color, delicious taste and characteristic aroma. Recent studies suggest that crocin has several medicinal properties like helping with inflammation (1), neurodegenerative diseases (2) and many more. We have worked on the pathway from zeaxanthin to crocin – extended from the pathway of farnesyl pyrophosphate (FPP) to zeaxanthin.
Due to their color, the pathway compounds have great potential as organic dyes for industrial applications. However, the labour-intensive production of saffron makes the product very expensive and the crocin pathway is poorly characterized. By using synthetic biology for recombinant expression in E. coli we hope to reduce the price of the compounds within the pathway and open up the possibility for industrial and medicinal applications to be further explored.
Previous work has been done with the five genes from FPP to zeaxanthin, but this operon is very large and unstable. We used chromosomal integration of these genes to ensure stable expression of zeaxanthin and allow for a decrease in antibiotics usage. The iGEM Uppsala 2013 Team tried to express the compounds after zeaxanthin in the biosynthetic pathway, but failed. To extend the pathway with the three-steps leading from zeaxanthin to crocin we successfully identified, assembled and characterized three enzymes in order to explore the possibility of using bacterial production of the color intense compounds.
To learn more about our zeaxanthin producing strain, click here!
To learn more about our crocin pathway, click here!
References
(1) Papandreou MA, Kanakis CD, Polissiou MG, Efthimiopoulos S, Cordopatis P, Margarity M, et al. Inhibitory Activity on Amyloid-β Aggregation and Antioxidant Properties of Crocus sativus Stigmas Extract and Its Crocin Constituents. J Agric Food Chem. 2006 Nov 1;54(23):8762–8.
(2) Chen L, Qi Y, Yang X. Neuroprotective effects of crocin against oxidative stress induced by ischemia/reperfusion injury in rat retina. Ophthalmic Res. 2015;54(3):157–68.
