Engineering the Common Soybean (Glycine max) to Biosynthesize Alpha-lactalbumin

Statham, Elena

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Engineering the Common Soybean (Glycine max) to Biosynthesize Alpha-lactalbumin Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/t148fj73g

Abstract

6 billion people drink cow’s milk worldwide. There are tons of dietary benefits to cow’smilk as it is a strong source of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and nutrients, and it contains all theessential amino acids. The dairy industry is booming, producing hundreds of million metric tonsof milk worldwide every year. The cows producing this milk often undergo abuse such ascontinuous forced impregnation, over-milking, malnourishment, and restrictive confinement.Additionally, the dairy farm industry is responsible for approximately 2.9% of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions due to the methane cows produce. To reduce the abuse of thedairy industry and reduce greenhouse gas emissions other ways of producing cow’s milk arebeing researched. Current research has been aimed at synthetically producing the major proteins,particularly the whey proteins, of cow’s milk in alternative host organisms such as yeast and E.coli. However, these organisms are unable to produce such proteins at a cost-effective and largeenough scale to be profitable over current dairy cow farming. Little research has been doneoutside of these microbial hosts. We hypothesize that Glycine max, the common soybean, canefficiently produce the whey proteins of cow’s milk, with cheaper production and larger yieldsthan current methods. This research found that the whey protein, α-lactalbumin, can betransformed into agrobacterium, but further experiments are needed to determine α-lactalbuminprotein production inside a soybean. The costs and yields available through this syntheticfarming method would then be researched for possible industrial production of synthetic cow’smilk.

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