Motivation

Acetaminophen is a pharmaceutical drug of the paracetamol category, that might be used by astronauts on Mars to treat pain and reduce a high temperature.

One of the grand challenges in space synthetic biology is in situ resource utilization (ISRU). The idea is to make use of resources on other planets / celestial bodies to produce materials necessary for human use, should they attempt to colonize the planet. This eliminates the need to transport materials from Earth, which can be expensive and cumbersome. Biological techniques are an innovative avenue to achieve ISRU. Another challenge is the manufacture of valuable compounds, like platform chemicals and pharmaceuticals, in space.

Thus, a potential problem statement would be to use synthetic biology to develop methods to use the silica (SiO2) in Martian surface regolith, either directly or indirectly, as a means to produce important chemical compounds.

Working on such a problem statement would allow us to compete for the newly created Space village prize.