PHOTOBIOREACTORS FOR SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION OF PLANT-DRIVEN BIOCOMPUNDS
Jessica Nirkko
Theme: Sustainable Feedstock, Synthetic Biology
Cohort Year: 2017
Academic Partner: University of Edinburgh
Industry Partner: Xanthella
Supervisors:Dr.Naomi Nakayama/Prof.Gary Loake
Jessica will be working on a project aiming to alter plant secondary cell wall properties in cell cultures. She is hoping to develop a platform to sustainably produce commodity products such as paper and biofuels while bypassing the need to fell trees, thus minimising land use and ecological impact. She is further interested in developing and introducing optogenetically inducible synthetic constructs into plant cell cultures, which could then be controlled using the LED bioreactors developed by Xanthella. In her free time she can usually be found with a bow and arrow in her hands.