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VitaYeast: Synthetic Vitamin Production in S. cerevisiae
Vitamin deficiencies are estimated to affect 1 out of every 3 people in the world. Vitamin A deficiency alone is estimated to claim the lives of 670,000 children under the age of 5 annually. Due to the limitations of impoverished countries to increase the availability of foods with vital nutrients, we envision a simple and economic solution through our 2011 iGEM project: VitaYeast. The goal of VitaYeast is to implement vitamin production pathways in S. cerevisiae (Baker’s Yeast). We hope the engineered yeast will be able to produce vital nutrients in significant amounts for use in bread-making, thereby placing additional nutrients into one of the most commonly eaten staples in the world.
The major power of VitaYeast comes from the fact that it enables sustainable malnutrition prevention in impoverished areas. Currently, most governments combat malnutrition by distributing multivitamins or vitamin-enriched products to the public. However, these products often have a limited shelf life, require specialized (and often expensive) storage, and are often difficult to distribute in places with poor infrastructures - the areas that need these kinds of products the most. Because Baker's Yeast can be freeze-dried and stored for months on end under ordinary conditions, storage and transport across vast distances would be very feasible. Additionally, once inhabitants in developing countries receive the yeast and begin starters for bread, they can maintain these cultures indefinitely and spread them very easily among their friends and neighbors, aiding in the dissemination of the vitamin-enriched yeast. In essence, we would be giving these impoverished people a self-replicating vitamin factory, VitaYeast, which would finally allow people in developing countries to take control of some aspects of their personal health.
As part of this project, we are developing a yeast expression platform including a library of promoters, termination sequences, and shuttle vectors. While iGEM has many well-characterized basic parts for E. Coli, yeast remains a largely untapped resource. The inclusion of shuttle vectors in our platform will allow future genetic engineers to take advantage of E. coli's ability to rapidly replicate while still being able to deploy their construct in S. cerevisiae. We hope our work will facilitate the use of yeast in future iGEM projects.
Despite the promise of VitaYeast, its reception might still be hindered by the public's concerns with genetically modified food. These concerns typically include, but are not limited to, safety and environmental impact. However, as technology advances and more natural resources are depleted, the impact of genetic modification will become more significant to society. Therefore, in addition to our wet-lab experiments, we hope to gather data to help us understand the concerns of both the developing world and local communities regarding genetic modification and the global food supply. While we stand firm in our faith of synthetic biology as a powerful tool for addressing global health needs, it is critical that we place our solution on a firm path towards global adoption.
