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Team:GeorgiaTech/Project
From 2014.igem.org
RBS Cloning Using PCR Primers: 30%
Promoter Cloning Using PCR Primers: 0%
Creation of sMMO Expression Vectors: 0%
Characterization of Recombinant sMMO Proteins: 0%
What the Frack?
Fracking is a mining technique in which a high pressure fluid is injected into a well bore in order to generate small fractures. These fractures allow previously inaccessible hydrocarbons to migrate to the well for later extraction. Because fracking can be applied to most oil and natural gas wells, it is a common technique for extending the life of these wells, and thus lowering the need for construction of new wells. While fracking activity is crucial for providing low cost energy resources for American industry, there is a difficulty in storing and treating fracking waste water in an environmentally and economically suitable fashion.
The waste water, commonly referred to as "flowback," is often collected in open air evaporation pools, where water and volatile (likely to evaporate) hydrocarbons including methane will evaporate away, reducing the volume of fluids that must be transported for treatment. Although the evaporation of water is necessary to reduce treatment costs, the loss of volatile hydrocarbons produces an environmental hazard and is also a loss of product for the drilling company, since treatment of the flowback often yields additional liquid and gas fuels. Since methanol is a much less volatile compound than methane, the enzymatic conversion of methane to methanol will both prevent the release of methane into the atmosphere and increase the liquid fuel yield from flowback treatment.
Elimination System
In order to remove the methane dissolved in the flowback, our team wants to engineer a strain of bacteria that can survive in temporary flowback, storage tanks and convert the methane to methanol before the flowback is depressurized and transferred to the open air evaporation pool. Our first step in this project is to engineer E.coli that expresses soluble methane monooxygenase (sMMO), an enzyme capable of converting methane to methanol.
This protein is found exclusively in methanotrophs, a class of bacteria which are found in energy poor environments with high methane concentrations, from which they obtain their energy. The sMMO enzyme is composed of the proteins A, B, and C. Protein A is the hydroxylase which replaces one hydrogen on a methane with one hydroxyl group; it is composed of 2 symmetric dimers of subunits alpha, beta, and gamma. Protein C oxidizes NADH to acquire 2 electrons, which are then transferred by protein B to protein A for use in the methane oxidation pathway.
Previous attempts to clone sMMO into E. coli by other labs have successfully expressed proteins B and C, however, protein A while expressed, was non-functional, likely due to improper folding of the protein.
Process
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Results
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Future
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Biobrick RBS and Promoter Primers
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References
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