Team:UGA-Georgia/“https://2014.igem.org/Team:UGA-Georgia/Overview"

Why study archaea?

What advantages does it possess over the exhaustively-studied E. coli and S. cerevisiae?

Consider industrial scaling of biologically manufacturing chemicals. To maximize efficiency and therefore profit, obviously one must cut costs of raw materials, while at least maintaining equal production. Archaea, particularly methanogens, directly provide this capability. E. coli and Methanococcus maripaludis alike are both capable of producing geraniol with addition of the right constructs. However, when you compare cost of substrates of these organisms, namely; sugars of E. coli and H2/CO2 or formate of methanogens, the methanogens have a clear advantage over E. coli as a significantly cheaper alternative. Even further, methanogens, by definition, utilized a process called methanogenesis which produces methane, an extremely useful bi-product in the industry as demonstrated below.

A sustainability method quickly gaining traction is production of biogas from organic waste. Methanogens play a vital role in anaerobic digestion/biogas production (fig 1). Biogas, being comprised mostly of methane and carbon dioxide, can be burned to generate heat and electricity (fig 2). Generating biogas via anaerobic digestion of biomass and organic waste is one of the few proven, cost-effective, scalable bioenergy strategies [1]. Leading professionals studying biogas production agree that synthetic biology will be the catalyst to revolutionize the biogas industry.