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From 2014.igem.org

In Georgia, legislation has recently been passed that allows for the legal use of Cannabidiol (CBD) oil for the treatment of seizures and other debilitating conditions. Unfortunately, the CBD oil that is available on the market is contaminated with THC or contains such low-levels of CBD to be rendered ineffective for private voluntary medical use. Hence, the goal of our project is to produce CBDA-synthase in transgenic tobacco plants, which catalyzes the production of CBD without the production of THC, and with the use of the tobacco plants Cannabis plants would be bypassed. Horseradish Peroxidase (HRP) will be used as a proof of concept because the introduction of this enzyme allows the production of it in the roots of transgenic tobacco plants and catalyzes the conversion of chromogenic substrates into colored products. This is a similar but more widely recognized pathway as to how we plan to produce CBDA-synthase. In parallel to introducing CBDA-synthase to transgenic tobacco plants, we are also trying to express the enzyme in pichia pastoris. This correlates to the 2014 Mambalgin Project since both projects will be utilizing a similar mechanism for protein expression in yeast therefore further continuation of our project will be suitable.

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