Difference between revisions of "Team:LaVerne-Leos/Project"

Currently, cyanobacteria is used to produce biofuel, however the process is too costly and inefficient to use on a large-scale production. Many researchers have been successful in increasing the amount of free fatty acids produced within the cells, which serve as the precursors to biofuel. However, scientists constantly run into a problem: high amounts of fatty acids is toxic to the cell and kills it. Our aim is to reengineer cyanobacteria to increase the efficiency of biofuel production by increasing the yield of fatty acids produced within each cell while solving the toxicity problem. To aid the cells in surviving these high amounts of toxicity we plan to upregulate the cells carotenoids, which will stabilize the cell membrane and get rid of reactive oxygen species.