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Team:Braunschweig/Results
From 2014.igem.org
Results
In this year’s iGEM project we, the iGEM Team Braunschweig, fought global warming right at the source - the digestive tract of cows. We developed an approach to reduce the emission of the important greenhouse gas methane using a genetically engineered bacterium - E. cowli.
E. cowli uses the enzyme soluble methane monooxygenase (sMMO) isolated from M. capsulatus. We were not only able to express all subunits of sMMO in soluble form but could also prove the activity of the whole enzyme complex in the heterologous host organism E. coli. However, this was not as trivial as it may sound - proper folding required coexpression of molecular chaperones.
Beside the successful expression and proof of activity we developed a practical application for the designed E. cowli to degrade methane before it gets emitted. This application included the immobilization of E. cowli into an alginate matrix resulting in many beneficial and advantageous effects such as a user-friendly dosage, high cost-efficiency, easy production as well as the biodegradability of the product.
