Developing genomic and transcriptomic tools for analysis of cannabinoid producing yeast strains

The therapeutic potential of cannabinoids is well established. The study of these molecules is primarily based on their availability from the cannabis plant (Cannabis sativa). In addition to common cannabinoids, there are dozens of rare cannabinoids produced in C. sativa with potential therapeutic benefits that cannot be fully evaluated because of their scarcity. Thus, there is a need for alternative production methods for these molecules. Willow Analytics is developing yeast strains that are capable of producing two rare cannabinoids that cannot be practically sourced from cannabis plants. Part of our development cycle is the analysis of the biological sequences of successive yeast strains. We currently have a bottleneck in building the computational pipelines for the analysis of our yeast strains and cannabis plants. This project will focus on building fully-automated pipelines for yeast data processing, designed specifically for development of strain engineering.

Faculty Supervisor:

Inanc Birol

Student:

Kristina Gagalova

Partner:

Willow Analytics

Discipline:

Biology

Sector:

Other

University:

University of British Columbia