It was a very great experience to be able to learn about everyone else’s research. There seem to be a wide range of fields that research is applicable in. I thought that Bryan’s presentation about the heterologous production of terpenes in E. Coli was particularly fascinating.
This presentation interested me because I have used E. Coli in some of my research. Specifically, I had to use them to replicate a DNA sequence. On the other hand, in Bryan’s lab they want to figure out how to use E. Coli to create organic compounds called terpenes. Terpenes are a type of aromatic organic compound, which have a strong smell to them. They are important because they may be used pharmaceutically and as biofuels. Plants naturally produce terpenes, but using plants to harvest a large amount of terpenes would be inefficient. The plants would use up a large amount of biomass and yet the yield would be low. Therefore, the lab wants to know if they can produce large amounts of terpenes using E. Coli. In order to create terpenes they must engineer a metabolic pathway. The lab already figured out two steps in the pathway, and the only thing missing is the final transformation into terpenes. By using such methods as plasmid construction Bryan hopes to solve this last step to allow E. Coli to create his specific terpenes(humulene, amorphadiene, bisabolene, and limonene.
I find the many different applications that research and research methods can be used for fascinating. I am excited to see the results of this and all the other research projects.
