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From 2014.igem.org

E.Kung-Fu

Abstract:

As a result of the development of industry, more and more wastewater will be discharged to the environment, which raises a lot of concern among the public. Waste water containing copper ions is one of the biggest problems in water environment pollution because copper can be extremely toxic to human body. The excessive cellular amount of copper ions can readily interact with oxygen, resulting in the generation of hydroxyl radicals which harms one’s health. The typical disease caused by excessive copper is called Wilson Disease, which has become a worldwide concern. In our program this year, we combined heavy metal meditation with RBC (rotating biological contactor), which is a biofilm-based reactor technology widely used for wastewater treatment, and developed a toolkit being able to gather copper ions, degrade the cyanide, detoxify the fluoride in the wastewater and at the same time suggest whether the water is safe in terms of copper amount. Our bacteria are so capable in defeating bad guys (harmful chemical compounds in the project) and retracting valuable resources in environment (Copper ions), which shows our ancient Chinese yin and yang balance principle in our culture. This stands out the characteristic of Tai-Chi , a represent of Chinese Kung Fu, so we call our project E.Kung-Fu.