Undergraduate Researcher return to map return to student search
Hometown:
Eagle,
ID
US
(Ada County)
School:
University of Idaho
Undergraduate student
Biotechnology & Plant Genomics
Funded by EPSCoR Award:
ICREWS | OIA-2242769
Research Location(s):
University of Idaho
COUNTIES: Latah
LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT(S): District 6
Research Statement:
My research interests include using biotechnology to improve agriculture and food production. In a world with a fast growing population that is quickly running out of food, I believe that biotechnology is the answer and can significantly improve food production and food access. I also have an interest in fighting rare diseases and exploring personalized medicine. This summer, I researched fighting diastatic contamination in beer by engineering common brewing yeast to produce killer toxins that inhibit the growth of diastatic contamination. Using a process called rare-mating, we have engineered brewing yeast that can successfully produce these killer toxins and inhibit the growth of diastatic contamination.
Research Impact:
This research has a significant positive impact on brewers and especially craft brewers across the United States. We have interviewed 100 craft breweries and 50% of those have encountered diastatic yeast. An enrichment of those that encountered diastatic yeast had losses of over hundreds of thousands of dollars due to diastatic contamination events. The hope with this project is to significantly reduce those numbers using our killer brewing yeast to fight and kill diastatic contamination that is present in beer. Brewers can use killer brewing yeast as a natural and efficient alternative to shutting down large-scale operations and carrying out extensive cleaning procedures in the event of diastatic contamination.