Team:TUDelft/Color overview

Color/Smell output

A lot of the color and aroma compounds that occur in nature are derived from a common precursor: Farnesyl PyroPhosphate (FPP). FPP is a natural occurring molecule in Eschirichia Coli but it is present in very small amounts. To enable cells to express color and aroma compounds in easily detectable amounts it may be necessary to overexpress a pathway that produces FPP. To do this, either the wild-type E. Coli pathway could be overexpressed or another pathway can be introduced into an E. Coli pathway. We have chosen to introduce the mevalonate pathway, because …. Most of the mevalonate pathway enzymes which we will introduce also occur naturally in E. Coli, but the enzymes of the last two steps are ‘borrowed’ from the yeast Saccharomyces Cerevisiae. We will first focus on this part, overexpressing FPP, before we will move on to pathways creating colored or smelling bacteria. Although we should aim to have a mechanism present to drain the excess FPP, FPP is toxic to cells in large amounts.

In figure x we show the mevalonate pathway as we would like to introduce it into our E. Coli.