Team:Paris Bettencourt/Project/VitaminB12
Ferment It Yourself
iGEM Paris-Bettencourt 2O15
- Background
- Design
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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.
