Week 7

This week focus was on making our final decision on the selection of one of the 2 patents we were initially interested in. Waiting for the professors to answer our emails, we were eventually able to have an appointment with the cyanobacteria researcher on March 2.  We gathered valuable information regarding the potential commercialization of projects from this technology as well as details on the opportunities this patent has to offer. The market is currently not competitive as no one has managed to commercialize the technology. Most of the biofuel production companies using  cyanobacteria photosynthesis go often times out of business as the operation cost from the chemical processes is important. The professor repeatedly emphasized that this patent was an enabling technology. Therefore, we cannot directly use it to develop any final products but rather take advantage of it in any transitional process that will be needed to develop our prototype. The professor asserted that developing profitable products  from the photosynthesis of cyanobacteria is hard and even if built, they are most likely not to be profitable. However, he noted that his lab is currently working on a project to produce specific chemicals called hydrocarbons from this photosynthesis. His team of scientists reprogrammed the cyanobacteria metabolism and successfully produced isoprene. Isoprene is the monomer used for the production of synthetic rubbers called polyisoprenes. They are highly marketable and used in a wide variety of rubber applications, including medical equipment, baby bottle nipples, toys, shoe soles, tires, elastic films and threads for golf balls or textiles. Their challenge was to maximize cyanobacteria photosynthesis productivity by making the cells absorb as much sunlight as possible, therefore producing the maximum quantity possible of the desired product, as a result of the chemical reaction. He concluded that we can leverage this photosynthesis to increase production of highly coveted biological materials. These reaction products can then be redistributed in the market of interest for high profits.