Metabolic Engineering and Construction of Expression Plasmids in Zymomonas mobilis
Authors:
Julia Brown, Emzo de los Santos, Nathaniel Glasser, Katie Knister, Daisy Lin, Gita Mahmoudabadi, Edward Pursifull, Chenxi Qiu, Ashley Su, Huey-Ru TsaiMentor:
Richard Murray, Thomas E and Doris Everhart Professor of Control & Dynamical Systems and Bioengineering, California Institute of TechnologyIn the search for renewable biofuels, microorganisms are used to produce biofuels. The bacterium Zymomonas mobilis is an efficient producer of ethanol. Attempts were made to increase the limited substrate range of Z. mobilis through metabolic engineering. The project plan was to assemble a plasmid carrying an allose degradation operon and transform it into Z. mobilis. Thus, Z. mobilis would able to ferment allose as a sole source of carbon. The genetic pathway and strategies for engineering Z. mobilis will be presented.