Implementation
Our final product is a gene-edited yeast, which is an ingredient of producing alcohol, we consider targeting major players in the alcohol industry, including some brewing factories and related research institutes.
Here is a brief introduction of our product. We will produce a gene-edited yeast, which will be functional in helping with fermenting wheat B starch to produce alcohol. Our yeast will produce three enzymes. They can accelerate the decomposition of wheat B starch into monosaccharides (glucose), and the yeast can further ferment glucose into ethanol. In the past, the three enzymes are required to be added, but now they are able to be secreted by the yeast naturally, In this way, our yeast will help alcohol producers simplify production procedures lower costs and shorten the production cycle.
Meanwhile, using wheat B starch as production raw material will also decease agriculture waste, and hence protect our environment.
Potential End Users
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Brewing Factories & Medical Alcohol Manufacturers
For brewing factories and medical alcohol manufactures, it is obvious that they need low-cost, efficient and user-friendly raw materials.Our yeast will help these businesses introduce wheat B starch to their production procedures, through which they will be able to enhance productivity and lower production costs.
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Biotechnology Firms
Innovation is a crucial symbol of biotechnology firms. Thereafter, they may be interested in using novel techniques in their research and development. Yeast has been a widely-used chassis for microbiological research, thus, our gene-edited yeast with new functions may also become choices for biotechnology firms in their project development.
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Research Institutes
Research institutes may also become our potential end users because we may conduct further research together to optimize our yeast.
Safety Concerns and Challenges
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Through making the yeast, transgenic process is involved. Till now, the potential safety has been a major problem of GMO products. For our product, since our yeast has exogenous genes, the leakage of which may cause genetic pollution.
We can not be more cautious in dealing with this potential safety concern. Thus, it is compulsory for us to make a large amount of foundational tests about the safety of our yeast before bringing it out of our lab.
We may consider adding a kill-switch in our yeast to tackle the leakage risk of exogenous genes.
Meanwhile, in every step of promoting our yeast, it is essential for us to follow the national GMO administration rules and regulations.
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Meanwhile, the psychological panic toward transgenic food is also a problem.
We need to hold quite a lot of education activities to explain the nature of GMO techniques, and GMO food to the general public.
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In the real world, to execute our project, besides doing experiments and making the yeast, we would also follow business procedure in order to implement our product to the market. Making a business plan is an important part, such as investigating on the alcohol industry about demands, the market price of existing yeast, and our product’s advantages compare with competitors.
We should do massive research and complete a comprehensive business plan before making real-world business application.
Considering the challenges of our project, just like the safety issues because of application of GMO techniques. Many people might have some worries of some potential harm to the body. Therefore, a lot of additional work should be done in the supplementation of our project, However, we hope that we will be able to work on it until it succeeds.
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