Team:UNICAMP-Brazil/Project

The Microguards: Overview

Nowadays, there are numerous industrial processes that use microorganisms such as Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae to produce compounds of interest, like insulin, ethanol and various enzymes. The success of these processes depends on the absence of contamination by other microorganisms in the culture medium. The presence of contaminants in a fermentation process reduces its efficiency due to competition between the contaminant and the fermentative organism, causing losses of 5 to 10% of the gross production. To try to solve this problem, the aim of our project is to engineer strains of E. coli and S. cerevisiae that are able to recognize and destroy contaminants during industrial processes.