Engineering Kombucha: Characterization of K. xylinus

Cosio, Amparo; Packard, Sydney R.; Morgan, Alice T.

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Engineering Kombucha: Characterization of K. xylinus Public

Komagataeibacter xylinus is a bacteria found in kombucha that produces cellulose, a versatile biomaterial. However, the study of K. xylinus is limited by a lack of metabolic modeling and genetic engineering tools for cellulose biosynthesis. Specifically, there is no method for high-throughput transformation K. xylinus. Therefore, this project sought to develop a scalable chemical transformation method for K. xylinus by adapting existing protocols for similar bacteria and to perform carbon balances for cellulose biosynthesis by K. xylinus in different media. Due to time constraints neither objective was fully accomplished, but the study collected significant research on K. xylinus, contributing to its characterization and future efforts to achieve a scalable transformation method.

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