Team:SDU-Denmark

The Untapped Food Resource of the Century

Team project description

Our project aims to create a nutrition source of high quality from a yet untapped resource: E. coli. Our project intends to genetically modify E. coli to overproduce a self-designed “Wonderprotein”, which contains the perfect distribution of all amino acids, including all the essential amino acids that must be incorporated through the diet. Likewise, will this bacteria produce essential fatty acids (Ω3-, and Ω6 fatty acids), that cannot be produced by humans. This amazing nutrition-combo will be obtained from the degradation of otherwise non-degradable material for humans, such as cellulose. In addition, we also want it to be tasty. Therefore we are furthermore trying to get the E. coli produce fragrances and flavors.

Our aim with this project is to help society in the right direction in controlling malnutrition due to the lack of food in the future. The importance of acknowledging that food comes from a limited source, as it is now, is a part of the idea with our project. We wish to highlight the limited source of food by introducing a solution to the problem, protein and Ω fatty acids produced from a strain of E. coli. We hope that our project will lead to a realization of the limited source of nutrition, and that this realization will be followed by an acceptance, but most importantly, debate, of introducing nutrition produced from E. coli.

The idea of generating nutrition from bacteria is a contradiction between the common opinion of how food is produced and of finding a solution on obtaining food in the future. This means that the importance of doing good research and including ethics and social aspects will have great impact on our iGEM project. This project is our proposal for a solution to malnutrition. We intend to present a possible solution, but we also aim at addressing the problem of malnutrition and the upcoming dilemma of obtaining food for everybody in a future with more, and more people to share this world.