Joanna Cosgrove12.01.08
Healthy Beer?
Rice University students push the bounds of innovation with 'BioBeer.'
By
Joanna Cosgrove
Online Editor
When faced with the challenge of devising an entry for the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition—the world’s largest synthetic biology competition held Nov. 8-9 in Cambridge, MA, where teams use a standard toolkit of DNA building blocks called “BioBricks” to create living organisms that do odd things—the students latched onto an idea that’s near and dear to most college students: beer. The idea and its execution proved so successful, the team of undergrads and graduate students earned a gold medal and second place for best presentation.
This year marked the student-led iGEM team’s (dubbed the “BiOWLogists”) third year in the competition. The team began by brainstorming an idea that could top last year’s innovation: a bacterial virus that fought antibiotic resistance—an idea that was well-received, but finished out of the prize running.
The idea for a genetically modified beer initially came about in jest. “After last year’s contest, we were sitting around talking about what we’d do this year,” said junior Taylor Stevenson. “(Graduate student) Peter Nguyen made a joke about putting resveratrol into beer, but none of us took it seriously.”
The team soon discovered a treasure trove of published literature about modifying yeast with resveratrol-related genes. When they looked further, they found two detailed accounts by teams that had attacked both halves of the metabolic problem independently. “That was when we said, ‘You know, we could actually do this,’” said junior Thomas Segall-Shapiro. Thus, the idea for “BioBeer” was born.
Although most of the team’s undergraduate members aren’t old enough to legally drink beer, they set to work, creating a genetically modified strain of yeast that fermented the beer and produced resveratrol at the same time.
To junior David Ouyang, resveratrol, the naturally-occurring compound that some studies have found to have anti-inflammatory, anticancer and cardiovascular benefits, seemed to be a great fit. “I have seen some studies where it’s been shown to activate the same proteins that are known to play a role in extending the life span of lab animals that are kept on low-calorie diets,” he said.
After coming up with the idea in the spring, many of the students worked through the summer on their projects and then split their time between studies and research during the fall semester, leading up to the competition in November.
The team obtained a sample of yeast commercially used to make wheat beer from Houston’s Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and worked to modify it with two sets of genes. The first set allowed the yeast to metabolize sugars and excrete an intermediate chemical that the second set later converted into resveratrol.
“One set of genes gets you from A to B, and the other gets you from B to C,” explained junior Taylor Stevenson.
In the end, the Rice team was able to genetically modify the strain of brewer’s yeast in time for the competition and provide evidence that some of their BioBricks were functional.
Faculty adviser Jonathan Silberg, assistant professor of biochemistry and cell biology, was proud of his students’ laboratory productivity. “They created more than a dozen new BioBricks and showed that their intermediate genetic circuits are functional when introduced into brewer’s yeast,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier with what this year’s team has accomplished. They did a great job identifying a problem worthy of this competition, made significant progress on the implementation of their idea and gave an outstanding presentation at MIT.”
Mr. Silberg said the iGEM competition provides a unique educational experience for undergraduates. “In terms of education value, the great thing about synthetic biology research is that it stimulates undergraduate creativity and gives them an opportunity to work collaboratively at an early stage of their science and engineering education,” he said. “While students work collaboratively in other undergraduate research endeavors, they typically are not given the pie-in-the-sky opportunity to pursue their own ideas.”
Although the team captured gold, in the “food and energy” category at iGEM, the Rice students were edged out by the team from Harvard and its “Bactricity,” bacterial biosensors that produce electricity.
In addition to the aforementioned students, the 2008 Rice BiOWLogists were sophomore Selim Sheikh, junior Arielle Layman, senior Sarah Duke, graduate student Justin Judd and faculty advisers Silberg, George Bennett and Beth Beason, all of Biochemistry and Cell Biology; Oleg Igoshin and Junghae Suh, both of Bioengineering; and Ken Cox of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
According to the University, the BiOWLogists are already looking ahead to next year. Team members recently filed the necessary paperwork to create the Rice Synthetic Biology Club. Mr. Ouyang said the official recognition would help ensure Rice’s annual presence at iGEM, even after the current team members graduate.
In a contest that’s been hallmarked by past entries, such as sheets of bacteria that behave like photographic film and bacteria that smell like mint while they’re growing but like bananas when they stop growing, clearly the frontier for new ideas is limited only by the bright minds of the pioneering team behind them.