Jamboree/Project Abstract/Team Abstracts

From 2010.igem.org

Construction of lignin degradation yeast strain through Yeast surface display technology

 Our project focuses on solving the problem of degrading cellulose from the perspective of synthetic biology. Resource and environment problems are two most important challenges for human beings in the 21st century. Biomass resources are renewable resources and the products of photosynthesis-more than 90% are wood cellulose material-on Earth each year weigh up to (1.5 ~ 2.0) × 1011t, which are the basic material resources for the survival of human society. Since cellulose has been surrounded by lignin, it is difficult to hydrate it into desirable glucose and therefore we have not made much use of cellulose. Today in the factory it is always making the lignin pretreatment with some strong acid or strong base, which could cause high cost and severe environmental pollution. Some nature fungis can degrade lignin through secreting lignin degrading enzyme system. But the use of those fungis is limited by the slow growth rate and the low enzymatic activity. So we design a new bio-lignin degradation system. We make some Saccharomyces cerevisiae which could synthetic lignin degrading enzymes and put them on the out surface of the yeast through the yeast surface display technology. Those cells, which propagate themselves rapidly, could affix to the wood cellulose material and begin to degrade the lignin quickly with the enzymes of their surface. This yeast will make the lingin degradation pretreatment more secure to our environment and lower cost. The products of this process is celluase and hemicellulase, which could be used to produce alcohol fuels and papermaking in the next steps.