Summary

Dairy products as well as meat are a substantial part of our everyday life. However, there are several side effects going along with our consume. Milk cows and cattle are ruminants and as such important factors in global warming. In their rumen, billions of microorganisms release greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane as they help digest the animal's food. This is, in fact, a natural process. However, industrial-scale farming and increasing demand intensify the emissions. Although few people are willing to permanently do without dairy products and beef, most people are not. Finding ways to decrease the production of climate damaging gases is therefore an essential challenge. Considering the 25 times greater contribution to global warming compared to CO2, methane emissions are a substantial point of action for future climate protection.

This year's iGEM team of the Technische Universität Braunschweig presents a novel approach towards the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions: We are going to engineer a bacterium able to metabolise methane just at its place of origin - the rumen of the cow. The well characterised and easily manageable model organism Escherichia coli is therefore planned to be equipped with an enzyme complex, the methane monooxygenase (MMO), which turns the greenhouse gas methane into a a natural intermediate of the cellular metabolism. This way, no methane would be released into the atmosphere. The six subunits of the MMO as well as other potentially required proteins will be incorporated into the new E. cowli bacterium. This would allow for the worldwide methane emissions to be reduced and, considering the constant population growth, for future food supply to be rendered more climate friendly.