With the worlds increasing energy demands, there exists a tremendous need for the development and industrialization of energy-dense biofuels. Metabolically engineered cyanobacteria provide a promising means, as the utility of photosynthesis bypasses the need for harvesting, transporting and deconstructing biomass. The idea proposed is to manipulate circadian pathways in an effort to optimize cyanobacterial isobutyraldehyde (IBA) production. Bioluminescence has proven successful as a real-time reporter of circadian gene activity, so the objective was to determine whether it is a feasible means of measuring IBA levels.
The automated high-throughput system developed expands upon the Kondotron system, utilizing a twelve-channel turntable with stepper motor and a CCD-cooled camera. The new system makes use of commercially available parts and is controlled entirely with custom LabView software. It features several software improvements, most notably to colony selection and processing.
Luminescence activity was found to increase with increasing IBA vapor concentrations, thereby allowing for efficient screening and monitoring of IBA-producing mutants. It is expected that system performance will only improve when long-chain aldehydes, alcohols, or alkanes are the desired end-product. A similar high-throughput system could be developed for monitoring bacterial fluorescence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-08122011-173938 |
| Date | 15 August 2011 |
| Creators | Mecklenborg, Jill Christine |
| Contributors | Robert Galloway Jr., Carl Johnson, Jamey Young |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-08122011-173938/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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