Natural rubber is a crucial material used in over 50,000 products, from car tires to medical devices, due to its durability, elasticity, and insulation properties. The global demand for natural rubber is increasing, especially in fast-developing Asian countries. However, all commercial natural rubber is currently sourced from rubber trees, mainly grown in South-East Asia, which makes the supply vulnerable to disease, climate change, and weather disruptions. Additionally, the supply chain for rubber contributes to high carbon emissions and geopolitical risks.
In my original plan, I had three main goals to produce natural rubber using yeast:
1. Find the missing components needed for rubber production by experimenting with a plant called Nicotiana benthamiana.
2. Modify yeast cells to produce many small structures called lipid bodies (LBs). These LBs would act like rubber particles, providing a space for rubber to be made and stored inside the yeast.
3. Recreate the natural rubber production process in yeast and fine-tune it to make high-quality rubber.
However, I didn’t pursue the third goal because the first two didn’t yield the expected results. Instead, we shifted the project’s focus to a new direction: creating a yeast cell factory to produce materials for rubber alternatives. As part of this new approach, we added a new goal:
2’. Find the most effective enzyme (myrcene synthase) in yeast and show that yeast can produce myrcene at a rate of half a gram per liter in the lab.
This new goal was successfully achieved.
