Team:TrinityCollegeDublin
E.artemisia
Combating Malaria with Synthetic Biology
One of the deadliest diseases in human history, malaria now claims over 600,000 lives a year.
Our mission is to investigate the production of affordable antimalarial drugs by the means of synthetic biology. We are working with artemisinic acid producing E.coli cells obtained from Amyris, with the support of Zagaya.
We have constructed biobricks to take advantage of an alternative pathway in artemesinin synthesis. This pathway allows for the production of dihydroartemisinic acid, a direct precursor to artemisinin.
This method has the potential for larger and cheaper artemisinin production in the future.