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Team:UGA-Georgia/Geraniol
From 2014.igem.org
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GeraniolWhat is Geraniol?Geraniol is a 10-carbon monoterpene-alcohol naturally occurring in plants such as rose and lemongrass. Due to its rose-like scent, it has a long history of usage approved by FDA in the fragrance and food industry. In recent years, potential usages of geraniol start expanding to biofuel, organic insect repellent and tumor suppressor. Currently, geraniol is commercially available through extraction mainly from plants. However, it is an inefficient model for geraniol production, as geraniol represents only a small portion of the plant biomass. | |||||
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Why Geraniol?When UGA-iGEM begun, we had the opportunity to work with the methanogenic arhcaeon, Methanococcus maripaludis, and after reading through the literature we were able to develop this project where we may open doors towards greater sustainability in biofuel production at drastically reduced costs. We chose geraniol in particular because of the two central points when designing this project: 1) Geraniol has a growing number of applications like those mentioned below (list 1), and 2) Methanococcus maripaludis naturally synthesizes the immediately prior intermediate, geranyl-pyrophoshphate, which is catalyzed into geraniol and iPP by the enzyme geraniol synthase (figure 2). | |||||
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How do we employ synthetic biology to produce Geraniol in Methanococcus maripaludis?There are several homologues of geraniol synthase (GS) found in different plants. After reading through the literature, we chose the GS gene from Ocimum basilicum, otherwise known as sweet basil, based off of its enzyme kinetics and rate of turnover. This gene was codon optimized based on the codon usage for M. maripaludis. Codon optimization is the process of selecting an organism’s most commonly used codon(s) for particular amino acid residues. This gene was synthesized where it may be cloned into the pAW42 vector. pAW42 is a constitutively expressing vector designed for function in both E. coli and M. maripaludis (figure 3). The GS gene, however, is optimized for expression in M. maripaludis. We use E. coli for cloning work and for rapid amplification of our plasmid, this is simply because these basic processes are significantly more time-consuming in anaerobic organisms. | |||||
