Degredo PETronum!

Introduction:

This year's METU iGEM Team is composed of eight undergraduates, two advisors, and two graduate students. We come from different areas of study, but we're all working together on this year's synthetic biology project for the iGEM competition. Due to the global impact of plastic pollution, we have decided to focus on biodegradation of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). PET is a widely used material, commonly found in plastic bottles, textiles, and other consumer goods. However, only a small percentage of it ends up being recycled, it became a global issue, and achieving our goal would have a big impact on the issue of plastic degradation.

"Nature doesn't make things like that," said Kenneth Peters, an organic geochemist at Stanford University, "so organisms have never seen that before."

How our project will be helpful?

Our project will help the environment to become cleaner.

Why did we choose this project?

All over the world, pollution is a huge problem. People are so reckless and unconcious about pollution and recycling, precautions of governments are usually insufficient. For example, Americans generate abo¬ut 210 million tons (231 million short tons) of trash, or solid waste, each year. Most of this trash (57 percent) gets placed in municipal landfills. About 56 million tons (27 percent) is recovered through either recycling, (such as glass, paper products, plastic or metals) or through composting. So we wanted to make people conscious of pollution and importance of recycling, also tried to give a solution for cleaning enviroment from this toxic waste because it is known that plastics contain toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A (BPA) and PS oligomers. References Freudenrich,C., (2014) How Composting Works. Retrieved from http://home.howstuffworks.com/composting.htm