Team:Berkeley

Some of the most major advances in synthetic biology involve the ability to use microorganisms to synthesize compounds that are difficult or costly to produce chemically. Our team hopes to exploit this familiar application of synthetic biology for the production of indigo in E. Coli.

Indigo, the very dye used to dye jeans around the world, is produced in quantities up to tens of thousands of tons every year. The chemical process involves converting vast quantities of aniline into indigo. Because indigo is extremely insoluble, this product must be reduced to leuco-indigo, a white soluble substance, using sodium dithionite. Upon immersing the cotton in leuco-indigo and exposing the coated cloth to air, indigo is allowed to reform, covalently bonding with the cloth. The wastes from this process are often discarded in large amounts - potentially altering the pH and stability of surrounding environments. Moreover, the process to produce analine is itself fraught with many unfriendly chemicals including sulfuric acid and nitric acid. With this chemical process in mind, our team seeks to improve titers of indigo using a bacterial system, thus bypassing several steps in the currently popular chemical synthesis process.