Team:Imperial College London/M2

Overview

The encapsulation phase has been designed to preserve and protect the fragile protein ‘payload’ against the harsh conditions of the outside world.

Insert image of cross-section showing outer salt layer, colanic acid, and trehalose.

Module 2, Part ii: Trehalose Production

In order to preserve the integrity of our protein of interest during storage of the E.ncapsulator, we decided to incorporate a device for trehalose production within our system.

Trehalose is a disaccharide formed from two glucose molecules. Throughout nature, trehalose is associated with resistance to dessication and cold shock, and is naturally produced in Escherichia Coli. We hope that by upregulating the trehalose production pathways in E.coli we can increase trehalose concentrations within our cell, thereby conferring some resistance to protein degredation in our system. This would allow easy transport and storage of the final product.