During production, industrial yeast cell factories keep running into tricky stresses—like random heat spikes or sudden osmotic shifts—that pop up off and on. These mess with yield and make batches inconsistent, turning into a big bottleneck for large-scale biomanufacturing.
Taking a cue from TCM’s “pulse diagnosis to spot illnesses,” we want to turn how strains react to stresses (over time and space) into “stress pulses”—think of them as the microbes’ own “pulse patterns.” Then we’ll design tailor-made genetic modules to fix the issue.
That's where our project, yeast SMART (short for yeast Sythetic Modulatory Adaptation for stress Resistant based on TCM), comes in! And no, "SMART" isn't just a fun name — it's a snapshot of exactly how we solve the problem:
We built a tripartite oscillator that hooks up to stress signals. It turns those stresses into measurable “fluorescent pulses”—so we can tell exactly where the stress comes from and how strong it is!
On top of that, we’ve paired this oscillator with a “toolkit” of genetic parts that fight multiple stresses, plus smart pulse control tricks.
A stress-sensing platform that’s easy on yeast’s metabolism, cheap to use, and tweakable for different needs.
To give industrial fermentation a new tool—one that “diagnoses” issues on the fly and adjusts precisely—so processes are more reliable and production runs smoother! That's what makes our yeast truly "SMART": synthetic, modulatory, adaptive, resistant, and rooted in TCM wisdom.