Team:Nanjing-China/Project

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Project Description

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The contamination of ecosystems with a multitude of pollutants has been a problem since the industrial revolution. Toxins make up a high proportion of pollutants that demonstrate serious environmental and ecological problems. Fugal toxins, Antibiotics, heavy mental and various natural toxins threaten environmental health and are not effectively removed by conventional environmental treatment. In order to avoid the disadvantages like high sensitivity; high cost and complicated operating process of traditional specific methods of treatment, we are hard to find a sensitive, selective, and convenient method. To do this, we aimed to create a BioLego of genetic parts for engineering complex E.coli. This BioLego will provide future iGEM generations and scientists worldwide with a greater ability to work with different kinds of toxins.


Our project has to design a modular system which makes it possible to quantitatively detect and degrade whatever kind of toxin, with its specific promoter and the coding sequence of its degrading enzyme. To get rid of the potential lack of specific recognition element, we applied synthetic riboswitches to the construction of our pathway. According to the published synthetic method, we can design the sequence of the riboswitches depend on their aptamers.


In the detection part, We can quantitatively decide the toxin concentrate of the sample according to the distance from sample point to the chromogenic area along the radius. In the degradation part, degrading enzymes will be generated to decompose the toxin in the environment with the help of a positive feedback system to improve the efficiency of degrading. Using the positive feedback path, we are expected to reach a higher sensitivity. Furthermore, taking the biosafety issue into consideration, we also developed a pathway to make engineering bacteria suicide when no toxin is existed. The specific recognition element and the degrading enzyme are just like Lego, put onto a foundation, fulfilling a function.


Based on our BioLego, the engineered toxin cleaner may become a significant approach to improve global environment quality in an affordable and sustainable fashion.



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