Team:INSA-Lyon/Project
From 2014.igem.org
The INSA-Lyon team is developping an E. coli-based platform as an alternative depollution method for metal contamination in water using an amyloid-display system for surface-functionalization, called CurLy'On. As far as France is concerned, drinkable water contamination from the metal pipes is a real issue. Indeed, the cost is estimated to twenty billion euros to fully replace the existing infrastructure. Using our system based on nano-sponge surfaces for water purification, we propose to extend the CurLy'On concept into a cheap bacterial filter as a solution. The use of surface-specific proteins particularly benefits the biotechnology research field in depollution alternative strategies but also in the medical field by improving the dialysis’ filter specificty on various metals for renal-insufficient patients.
Unlike most metal bioremediation projects, our solution does not rely on intracellular capture, which means we can kill the bacteria and degrade their DNA using physiochemical methods to ensure the safety of the biofilter