Team:Shanghai Metro/Partnership
Partnership
Background of Partnership
PecTeast (Xiamen_city) is also a 2021 iGEM high school team. They focuses on
applying CRISPR-Cas 9 to
create a novel wine yeast, which is functional in both degrading pectin and fermenting. Currently, in fruit
wine and juice production, pectase is added to degrade pectin to enhance juice transparency and even the
overall production efficiency. Petcase usually costs 100-250 RMB/kg and it is estimated that it costs
100-1000 RMB to produce 1 ton of fruits. Thereafter, if team PecTeast’s experiments succeed, the
widely-application of their yeast will lower the production costs of fruit wines and juice. It also means
that the commercial values of their yeast is tremendous, thus team PecTeast came to us to discuss in-depth
cooperation.
Overview of VI Patent Project (Strain Patent Protection Principles)
• Originally-designed plasmids are transformed to E. Coli
(DH5a) to realize patent protection;
• Options of originally-designed plasmids could be Pus232-ike2-tke2 or
Pus232-ike4-tke4;
• Pus232 is extracted from E.Coli; gene ike and tke are extracted from
Pseudomonas putida;
• Gene tke secretes toxin while gene ike produces protein immune to that
toxin;
• The promoter of gene ike is inducible, indicating that only with the
induction of a specific ligand, will gene ike be expressed ;
• The promoter of gene tke is constitutive, indicating that its toxic
protein expresses at any time.
How to Protect Team PecTeast (Xiamen_city)’s Yeast through Partnership?
• Extract gene ike2-tke2 or ike4-tke4 from originally-designed plasmids;
• Amplify the extracted genes by PCR;
• Produce homologous recombination template by CRISPR, and then integrate
the extracted genes to the genome of team PecTeast’s yeast ;
(Since the effector of gene tke and immune factor of gene ike are commonly used, it is unnecessary to
re-design them)
• After the gene editing, put the yeast in a certain ligand to realize
patent protection.
Mutual Benefits for VI Patent and PecTeast
• Useful patent protection tools acquired by team PecTeast and further
value may be added to their yeast in commercialization;
• Commercialization opportunities for team VI Patent, if the partnership
succeeds between PecTeast and VI Patent, this model could be proliferated fast to other iGEM teams,
enhancing the impact of team VI patent;
• Demonstration of iGEM spirit-creating a mutually-beneficial, open, and
collaborated platform for synthetic biology and related projects.