Engineering Commons^™

Metabolic Modeling Of Spider Silk Production In E. Coli, Sarah Allred

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Spider silk has the potential to be a useful biomaterial due to its high tensile strength and elasticity. It is also biocompatible and biodegradable, making it useful for wound dressings and sutures, tissue and bone scaffolds, vessels for drug delivery, and ligament and tendon replacements. In some studies where spider silk has been used to grow cells, the silk has promoted more cell growth than the control. However, it is difficult to obtain the high volume of silk needed for these undertakings on a large scale. Spiders are territorial and cannibalistic, so they cannot be easily farmed. Therefore, spider silk …

Designing Predictive Mathematical Models For The Metabolic Pathways Associated With Polyhydroxybutyrate Synthesis In Escherichia Coli, Angela Dixon

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Plastics are a versatile and widely used material. However, traditional plastics are derived from petrochemicals and are not biodegradable. Polymers synthesized from microorganisms that have similar properties to plastic are potential biodegradable replacements. The objective of this project is to use mathematical modeling as a tool to engineer a strain of bacteria optimized for the production of bio-plastics.

Production costs can be reduced by using a bacterial strain specifically optimized for bio-plastic production. By reducing production costs, bio-plastics will be able to commercially compete with traditional plastics. Society will benefit as bio-plastics replace traditional plastics. Fossil fuels will not be …