DTU iGEM Team 2021: PHEAST
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas which is 28-36 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. Every year, 570 million tonnes of methane are emitted into the atmosphere from various industrial and agricultural sectors. The UN Sustainable Development Goals constantly emphasize on the need to take immediate measures to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and their effects on climate. Despite global efforts towards biosustainability, natural gas and oil will play a crucial part of the energy market for the decades to come, creating a need for efficient methods of mitigating their negative effects.
We saw this as an opportunity to build a methane consuming yeast cell factory which can use methane as the sole carbon source. To do this, we chose Komagataella phaffii (P. pastoris), a methylotroph to engineer the cell-factory since it has been used extensively in industrial protein production due to its high protein-secretion as well as ease of protein purification. We aimed to integrate the pMMO subunit from M. capsulatus which has been reported to convert methane to methanol. Further, K. phaffii can utilize the methanol to produce products of interest via its native metabolic pathways. As a proof of concept, we have chosen to engineer our strain to produce leghemoglobin - a food-additive in plant-based meat-alternatives. This could encourage more sustainable dietary choices, therefore further contributing to the environmental cause. In the future, we believe that this methane-consuming cell-factory will be able to produce many proteins of interest.
We saw this as an opportunity to build a methane consuming yeast cell factory which can use methane as the sole carbon source. To do this, we chose Komagataella phaffii (P. pastoris), a methylotroph to engineer the cell-factory since it has been used extensively in industrial protein production due to its high protein-secretion as well as ease of protein purification. We aimed to integrate the pMMO subunit from M. capsulatus which has been reported to convert methane to methanol. Further, K. phaffii can utilize the methanol to produce products of interest via its native metabolic pathways. As a proof of concept, we have chosen to engineer our strain to produce leghemoglobin - a food-additive in plant-based meat-alternatives. This could encourage more sustainable dietary choices, therefore further contributing to the environmental cause. In the future, we believe that this methane-consuming cell-factory will be able to produce many proteins of interest.