Team:INSA-Lyon/Project
From 2014.igem.org
The INSA-Lyon team is developing 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 specificity 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 physio-chemical methods to ensure the safety of the biofilter