Advanced Macular Degeneration is the current leading cause of blindness and vision loss in people aged 65 and over. 1.75 million people in the US are affected with AMD, and that number is expected to increase to almost 200 million worldwide by 2020. Lutein is a carotenoid currently used as a dietary supplement taken to treat and prevent the onset of AMD. The production of lutein is currently done through the cultivation of marigolds. Carotenoids are extracted from its petals, from which lutein is isolated.  

Our aim is to introduce a system capable of producing lutein from carotenoid precursors into a bacterial system. As these pathways are native to plants and nonexistent in bacteria, tne main challenge is obtaining every enzyme necessary to allow the pathway to occur. Strains of lycopene (a carotenoid precursor) producing bacteria already exist, and we expect to begin the synthesis from this point. Another main challenge is the regulation of genes required to proceed from lycopene to lutein. Lycopene is the precursor for a multitude of carotenoids, all of which are produced in pants due to necessity. To produce lutein, the lycopene must first undergo a reaction with the specific enzymes in order, ε-cyclase then β-cyclase. Having both enzymes in the system, though, allows reactions between β-cyclase and lycopene, which yields a product unable to be converted into lutein. Through regulatory measures such as altering gene expression levels, we plan to optimize the efficiency of the lutein synthesis pathway. We also aim to create a mathematical modeling system capable of correlating the expression levels of proteins to relevant efficiencies in similar synthesis pathways.