Difference between revisions of "Team:Paris Bettencourt/Project/VitaminB12"

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Cobalamin is a vitamin involved in the metabolism of every cell in the human body. It is needed for development and maintenance of the nervous system and brain. Vitamin B12 is involved in DNA synthesis and regulation of the transcription. Neither humans nor animals are able to synthesize this vitamin. Foods of animal source are the only natural source of cobalamin in human diet and Cobalamin deficiency results in heavy symptoms including brain damage. It makes it the cause of one of the major vitamin deficiency in developing countries. <br>
 
Cobalamin is a vitamin involved in the metabolism of every cell in the human body. It is needed for development and maintenance of the nervous system and brain. Vitamin B12 is involved in DNA synthesis and regulation of the transcription. Neither humans nor animals are able to synthesize this vitamin. Foods of animal source are the only natural source of cobalamin in human diet and Cobalamin deficiency results in heavy symptoms including brain damage. It makes it the cause of one of the major vitamin deficiency in developing countries. <br>
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We tackled this issue by the re-engineering the food microbiome of Idli which is a very popular dish used as primary food source throughout India.
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We tackled this issue by the re-engineering the food microbiome of Idli which is a very popular dish used as primary food source throughout India. Since the microbial ecosystem of Idli doesn't produce vitamin B12, we introduced <i>Propionibacterium freudenreichii</i>, a bacterium that has been reported as a Cobalamin producer (Takahashi-Iñiguez et al. 2012) and assessed its fitness in the Idli environment.<br>
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<h2>Production of cobalamin with<i>Propionibacterium freudenreichii</i></h2><br>
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<h2>Results</h2><br>
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The pathway of production of the vitamin B12 is huge in terms of genetic material needed for the production of all the enzymes and such cloning is not likely to work during the igem time scale. This is why we tried to find a strain which is already used in the industry to produce B12.<br>
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Among the over-producers strains used for cobalamin synthesis, <i>propionibacterium</i> was selected because it is widely used in cheese production (like emmental).<br>
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<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/d/d7/Cobalemmental.jpeg" width='300px'>
 
<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/d/d7/Cobalemmental.jpeg" width='300px'>
  

Revision as of 02:38, 19 September 2015

Background

Aims

Results

Cobalamin or vitamin B12



Cobalamin is a vitamin involved in the metabolism of every cell in the human body. It is needed for development and maintenance of the nervous system and brain. Vitamin B12 is involved in DNA synthesis and regulation of the transcription. Neither humans nor animals are able to synthesize this vitamin. Foods of animal source are the only natural source of cobalamin in human diet and Cobalamin deficiency results in heavy symptoms including brain damage. It makes it the cause of one of the major vitamin deficiency in developing countries.
We tackled this issue by the re-engineering the food microbiome of Idli which is a very popular dish used as primary food source throughout India. Since the microbial ecosystem of Idli doesn't produce vitamin B12, we introduced Propionibacterium freudenreichii, a bacterium that has been reported as a Cobalamin producer (Takahashi-Iñiguez et al. 2012) and assessed its fitness in the Idli environment.

Results


B12 daily requirement and toxicity


Children: 0.4-1.8ug/day
Pregnant Women: 2.6ug/day
Men:2.4ug/day
Cobalamin is not toxic even in doses well above the recommended daily allowance because it is a water soluble vitamin.
However this comes with a cost as water soluble vitamins are not stored in the body but excreted through urine.