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Team:SF Bay Area DIYbio/Project
From 2014.igem.org
Revision as of 05:10, 17 October 2014 by MariaChavez (Talk | contribs)
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Overall project summary There are currently over 260 million dairy cows worldwide, each producing 115 kg CO2 equivalent per day, or about 2.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions1,2,3. In South America, Africa and Asia, deforestation to make way for pastureland is an urgent concern. About 83% of the deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is used for pasture4.The Real Vegan Cheese Project intends to reduce dependence on large-scale commercial dairy in the production of cheese and casein-derived products by replacing the dairy cow with baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We are engineering the synthesis of bovine and human Alpha-S1, Alpha-S2, Beta and Kappa casein proteins as well as a kinase enzyme that may help the process of making a solid cheese. It is our hope that we can synthetically produce cheese that is more ethical, healthier and produces lower emissions than traditional dairy. By replacing dairy cows with carbon-sequestering bioreactors, we could save thousands of doe-eyed Holsteins and Jerseys from the misfortunes of the industrial farm, reduce the incentive for deforestation and drastically lower the GHG emissions of casein and cheese production. We estimate that we could reduce emissions per gram of casein by 40-90%. Furthermore, Real Vegan Cheese is committed to open source and open patent biology. It is our hope that this process can be employed and improved upon by enterprising biologists, hackers and epicures the world over. Citations
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