Team:Worldshaper-Nanjing

Self-sinking Algae for CO2 Sequestration (or Algae Fixer)

Increasing level of carbon dioxide in earth's atmosphere is the main reason of global warming and has lead us to find a way fight this worsening situation by slowing down the accumulation rate or reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in atmosphere. With insight from our Human Practices, we hoped to develop an efficient biological carbon dioxide sequestration system using Synchronous sp. PCC 7002. The capability of CO2 capturing and storage of the algae was improved by inserting foreign genes, encoding rubisco, and starch synthase. The modified strain was also designed to have an expression of a metal binding protein on its pili to increase density and deactivate pili slowly, which would finally cause the algae to sink to the sea bottom and permanently cut off atmospheric carbon from reentering the carbon cycle.