Team:Santa Clara/The Problem

The Problem

Bioreactor technology allows us, as synthetic biologists, to take our technology to the large scale. It denotes cell culture methods that allow for the mass production of organisms and their products by facilitating growth in various apparatuses. The goal of these systems is to create an environment for elevated cell growth to promote the production and/or degradation of various substances. These systems have been optimized to fit endless applications but one problem remains unresolved. In these cultures, cells are designed to reach high cell densities, which leads to an increased build up of metabolic acid. The increasing presence of acid in the environment adversely affects cell processes because weak acids can easily diffuse back through the cell membrane to inhibit and degrade DNA, as well as degrade proteins essential to cell survival. To offset this issue and maintain cell vitality, the culture must be supplemented with various basic solutions to neutralize the acid. This increases the running cost of the system, through the cost of the solutions themselves, as well as the production and implementation of systems to distribute the base. It also results in slowed cell growth due to the exposure of highly concentrated base.

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We aim to offset this hurdle in bioreactor technology by creating organisms that would be more resilient to these acidic conditions. Being as these cultures won’t continuously increase in acidity, as there is a constant efflux of the media that will lead to a leveling off of pH, if we can equip the organism with the necessary machinery to survive that pH we could eliminate the addition of base. At the very least, we can decrease the amount of base needed. We looked to nature’s solutions to devise a plan to accomplish this goal.