Team:Minnesota/Templates

Project

Mercury is a neurotoxic heavy metal with the ability to biomagnify, therefore it is a significant issue in public health and environmental studies worldwide. Its levels are continually on the rise due to copper, nickel, and gold mining activities, the industrial use of mercury catalysts, mercurial fungicides in agriculture, and the burning of fossil fuels. This has resulted in the pollution of many marine ecosystems and water reservoirs worldwide, the cleanup of which using current technology, is either not feasible or incredibly costly. This study describes the use of engineered recombinant bacteria to facilitate the biological remediation of the neurotoxin methylmercury and hazardous mercury ions from an aquatic target site into less toxic form. This synthetic microbe was incorporated in novel encapsulation technology within a cost-effective, scalable water filtering column. The employment of this device could rigorously change the practices used in mercury decontamination efforts as well as pave the way for the switch to biological rather than chemical processes. Furthermore, this technology can be applied towards bioremediation and biosensing of various other heavy metals and organic toxins in the environment.

Dry Lab

Wet Lab

Policies & Practices

Our Policies & Practices team had a holistic approach to addressing the public health concern of methylmercury contamination as it relates to the implementation of our device. Our team actively attempted to address problems associated with the application of our project and device. From early education and societal perception to small-business design and device implementation, UMN iGEM sought new ways to address our project from varying perspectives to better inform the design and launch of our project. To explore some highlights of our policies and practices team [insert navigation guide here].

K-12 Education

Building on past successes, our team was devoted to volunteering our services to the community in a number of educational venues. The team took our curriculum, first developed in 2013, and improved the structure and delivery of our lesson plans in hopes to encourage awareness and education on topics in synthetic biology. Since its inception, our educational outreach group ECORI (Educating Communities On Research Innovation) has taught our original curriculum to over 200 students (K-12); an exhibit-form of our curriculum to a number of children of all ages at the Science Museum of Minnesota, 3M; and has been represented at several STEM fairs within the metropolitan community. In the spirit of science, our curriculum has been ever evolving to constantly address salient topics and educational materials and is flexible in nature to be taught in a variety of settings.

Intellectual Property

Documentary

The University of Minnesota 2014 iGEM team proudly presents our documentary film discussing the background of our project and the bioethics relating to our device. The main purposes of this documentary film are to familiarize the audience with the global mercury contamination problem, to discuss the bioethical questions of synthetic biology and biotechnological products, and to evaluate the bioethical concerns of our device implementation. To address the above missions, we have conducted interview with specialists from environmental toxicology, biotechnology, and philosophy at the University of Minnesota. We explore the past incident of methylmercury contamination in Minamata, Japan, as well as the ongoing methylmercury contamination in the state of Minnesota. Through our collaboration with the 2014 Colombia iGEM Team, we further examine the current methylmercury contamination in Colombia because of illegal and informal gold mining using mercury as a reagent. While GMOs are prevalent in today’s society in forms of food, products, and biotechnology, the public perception of GMOs still diverges. We pace through many different discussions in our video, including why GMOs are perceived differently in the public, why research on the effect of GMOs is usually time- and fund-intensive, and how policy-making corresponds with scientific findings to ensure the biosafety of GMOs. So is it safe to implement our device that contains GMOs into the local, polluted water? How do we assess the benefits of implementing our device and how do we know if the benefits out-weight the potential risk of introducing a biohazard into the local water stream? What kinds of precautions should we bear in mind when designing the device? While our documentary addresses all these issues, what is even more thought-provoking is the question of can we reduce the usage of GMOs for bioremediation by reducing the production of pollution? Please sit back and enjoy as the University of Minnesota 2014 iGEM Team presents our full thought processes regarding the above matters in a documentary film.

Public Perception