About the Project

Project 13: High-throughput screening of large and diverse yeast strain libraries for identification of improved cell factories with vanillin glucoside as the test case.

In this project, we are developing an automated and high-throughput method for yeast strain construction. The method is making use of mating and the CRISPR-Cas9 technology to efficiently and simultaneously introduce a genetic modification in a large number of strains. High-throughput strain construction can greatly aid yeast cell factory development, enabling important resources such as the yeast mutant libraries and biodiverse collections of strain backgrounds to be used in the search for better producing cells. We are applying our research to the biobased production of vanillin, using the method to identify yeast strains with improved production of this industrially important flavoring agent.

Read more about Eukaryotic Molecular Cell Biology

Helen Olsson

Research Interests

 

My main research interest lies within the application of synthetic biology in developing more sustainable industrial bio-processes and products. I have an engineering and master’s degree in Biotechnology and my previous research has been focused on yeast genetic engineering. It was during my Bachelor’s studies while taking part in the iGEM competition that the field of synthetic biology initially caught my interest. Later, during my Master’s project, I became further involved with the use of metabolic engineering for development of sustainable, industrial bio-processes. I am inspired by the idea of applying engineering principles to biology and motivated by the challenge of designing and constructing novel, improved and industrially relevant microbial cell factories.