Team:METU Turkey

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."

Who will our project help?

Our project will help the environment to become cleaner.

Why did we choose this project?

The biodegradation of plastic bottles took thousands of years, and the degrading process emits toxic chemicals into the air. Our project aims to clean enviroment with the degredation of PET to pyruvate by E.coli. With this project,while the environment will be cleaned from PET, the E.coli would add pyruvate to the cell cycle and use it as a new source.