Team:Toulouse INSA-UPS/Proof Of Concept
Proof of concept
Using the violet as a proof of concept, we started this edition with a challenge: to mimic the violet scent with a microorganism as a proof of concept of the potential and easiness of synthetic biology for the perfume and cosmetics industry. We hoped to show with this challenge that synthetic biology is the future for the production of fragrances, and by the way, to inspire future igemers to develop projects in this promising field.
With a small team of only six students and in less than four months of manipulation, we were able to successfully assemble all the genetic constructs we had designed, integrate them in their final chassis and evaluate the constructed strains.
We demonstrated the production of the three most important molecules of the violet scent: α-ionones, β-ionones and dihydro-β-ionone. More than that, we were able to validate the functionality of fusion enzymes that had not been described in yeast and that could allow to improve the production of ionones by biotechnological means in the future thanks to a metabolic channeling phenomenon (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Proof of concept of the functionality of our enzymatic strategies for the production of ionones, the main molecules of the violet scent.
Thus, the challenge we set ourselves is already a success. There are for sure perspectives and plenty of room for improvement, such as a quantitative analysis of the production of our molecules of interest, the set up finalization of the co-culture and the extraction process of the molecules of interest that we would have liked to perform by pervaporation.
Anyway, using an innovative approach of mechanistic and dynamic modeling coupled with a rigorous entrepreneurship analysis, we were able to demonstrate the feasibility of industrialization of our project and to propose the dimensioning of a pilot production unit.
Our project has already attracted the attention of industrials involved in the production of raw materials for perfumes and cosmetics. This is just the beginning, biotechnology will very probably constitute a new sustainable paradigm for industrial production. Our effort demonstrates this is feasible and accessible, even with a team of students starting from scratch.
Producing rare natural ingredients, finding alternatives to certain endangered natural resources, or even creating new fragrances that do not yet exist, the only limit is the imagination of synthetic biologists.
