Team:Penn/Overview

Synthetic biology is a rapidly evolving field creating foundational advances from bacterial biosensors generating chromoproteins to amazing strains capable of cleaning up radiation. Largely, these projects utilize the reliable “powerhouse” host cell of synthetic biology: E.Coli. This strain serves as a valuable chassis for most projects as it is well-characterized and relatively easy to transform. While E.Coli is undeniably important in synthetic biology, further expansion in the field could originate in characterization of rare strains of bacteria. Incorporating more arcane strains in research opens the field to take advantage of the biological diversity and unique attributes of bacterial organisms.

This summer, we sought to explore a new chassis in the field of bioremediation, a waste management technique that involves the use of organisms to remove or neutralize a pollutant from a contaminated site. Previously, synthetic biologists used E.Coli to sequester from water. However, the strain can disrupt natural ecosystems if it is not filtered out properly and can be difficult to remove from the environment. We attempted to leverage the biological diversity of an uncharacterized strain Magnetospririllum magneticum AMB-1 to address this issue. This strain of magnetotactic bacteria aligns to a magnetic field by producing magnetite-accumulating organelles. AMB-1 was a natural choice in our search to make a comprehensive bioremediation tool that could be removed from a polluted water source along with the pollutant itself.

We chose to tackle AMB-1 bioremediation of cadmium, the second largest pollutant in water using the following four lanes of experimentation. The first two categories address the characterization of AMB-1, while the final two focus in on its capabilities as a bioremediation tool.