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From 2014.igem.org

Project Description

As all of us know, formaldehyde is harmful for our human beings, we will feel sick and even get disease when we stay in environment with high concentration of formaldehyde. But on the other side we have to use formaldehyde for series of reasons: formaldehyde is the only available material, formaldehyde is of high efficiency when we use to handle our problems, using formaldehyde is very cheap…… So that is why we cannot refuse to use formaldehyde.

We have to use formaldehyde in our daily life, but the risk of using it can be avoided by a quick and cheap method——the project of WHU. In this project, our team has designed a system to work out the main problem: this system is designed to function in E.coli, three subsystems are included: With the Twice Coloration System, we can know, from the color change, whether there is formaldehyde or not and whether the formaldehyde is eliminated completely. And the Street Cleaner System could change formaldehyde into water and carbon dioxide through several reactions with the help of specific enzymes. The Lysis System can release the enzymes into the reaction mixture, in which way it enhances the function of the Street Cleaner System. Finally, with all these three systems, we can deal with formaldehyde problem.

Our work can also be used separately, for example, the first subsystem can be used to detect formaldehyde in our house, factories can use the second system to clean sewage, we hope that our work can make contribution to the society and finally our dream can come true.