Team:HKUST/AttractantProduction

In the 20th century, a large number of organic molecules have been identified as attractant towards drosophila, and many are now being produced for industrial use. Such compounds include 2-phenylethanol, eugenol, methyleugenol, isoeugenol, methylisoeugenol, ethanol, acetic acid and glucose, etc. This broad category of attractant molecules exhibit different levels of attraction for the insect.

In this sub-project, we are trying to use the S. cerevisiae endogenous metabolic enzyme to produce a volatile insect attractant. Attractant production would be achieved by induced over-expression of an aromatic amino-transferase, the endogenous enzyme in yeast that can catalyze a reaction to yield 2-phenylethanol. This pathway will be triggered by the downstream signal from the GPCR, which activates the FUS1 promoter.