Overview

E. kungfu

As a result of the development of industry, more and more sewage were discharged to the environment, which raises a lot of concern among the public. Sewage containing copper ions is one of the biggest problems in water environment pollution because copper ions are extremely toxic to human body. The excessive cellular amount of copper ions can readily interact with oxygen, resulting in the generation of hydroxyl radicals which harms one's health. The typical disease caused by excessive copper ions are called Wilson Disease, which has become a worldwide concern. In our program this year, we combined heavy metal meditation with RBC (Rotating Biological Contactor), which is a biofilm-based reactor technology widely used for sewage treatment, and developed a toolkit being able to gather copper ions, degrade the cyanide, detoxify the fluoride in the sewage and suggest whether the water is safe in terms of copper amount at the same time. Our bacteria are so capable in defeating bad guys (harmful chemical compounds in the project) and retracting valuable resources in environment (Copper ions), which shows our ancient Chinese yin and yang balance principle in our culture. This stands out the characteristic of Tai-Chi , a represent of Chinese Kung Fu, so we call our engineering bacteria E. kungfu.