STUDENT IN FOCUS
IGEM TEAM: FROM USED COOKING OIL TO MEDICINE Belgium is world-famous for its ‘French’ fries. The large amount of cooking oil involved does create a major waste problem with a substantial risk content. The iGEM student team is working on a method to turn waste oil into useful steroid drug precursors through synthetic biology. Team captain Tom Konings, master in Drug Development, commented.
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hirteen team members with ten nationalities from six faculties. That, briefly, is the iGEM KU Leuven team taking part in the prestigious international iGEM competition in 2023. The challenge is to solve a concrete problem in the local community by means of synthetic biology. “Actually, it’s about the application of engineering principles to biology,” Tom explains. “More specifically, it is the design and construction of new biological pathways, devices and systems or the re-design of existing biological systems for useful purposes.” Technovation Hub iGEM KU Leuven is by far the most heterogeneous team within Technovation Hub, the incubator and promoter of innovative entrepreneurship in the Faculty of Engineering Technology. “Although our team does not include engineering students, Technovation Hub offers the opportunity and support to gain useful experience in entrepreneurship, teamwork, PR and communication”, Tom continues. “Taking part in an international competition inevitably also puts your social skills to the test.” Carbon source The local problem the Leuven team wants to tackle is the vast amount of waste oil that results from preparing fried food. “This oil contains a lot of carbon,” Tom explains. “To maximise the availability of the carbon source from the oil, we engineer a chassis for biosurfactant production and quantify the increase in yeast growth rate. Currently, chemically derived polymers are used as emulsifiers to increase yield and promote uptake of lipids in micro-organisms. It would save a lot of time and money to express biosurfactants instead of using the chemically derived polymers.” 20
“Another problem we are addressing relates to the production of steroid drug precursors,” Tom continues. “These are complex molecules that are very difficult to synthesize from scratch. Currently, methods are already in place to metabolize intermediates such as Campesterol to useful therapeutics but these intermediates still need to be extracted from plants or animals. Interestingly, steroid drugs have many applications such as the use of corticosteroids to treat inflammation and sex hormones. They represent the second largest market of pharmaceuticals after antibiotics.” Biosurfactants “Our aim is to tackle the waste cooking oil and the steroid problem at once while developing a platform to express biosurfactants,” says Tom. “Therefore, we use a microorganism -more particularly the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica- to transform lipids present in waste cooking oil into campesterol with the help of bio emulsifiers. We focus on expressing biosurfactants which are important in the later stages of successfully growing the yeast strains on a harsh oil substrate. Besides campesterol synthesis in Yarrowia lipolytica, we are also experimenting with biosurfactant production in other organisms such as S. cerevisae and E. coli.” “Furthermore, several team members are working on optimally designing experiments to enhance the system’s efficiency. We engage in simulating the behaviour of the yeast under different conditions, using molecular dynamics and dynamical systems simulations. These applications will provide us with valuable in-
