Difference between revisions of "Team:Paris Bettencourt/Biomaterials"

Revision as of 09:42, 31 October 2017

In recent years, the interest in obtaining microbial cement has gained its popularity along with such problems as fractures and fissures in concrete structures which is created by weathering, land subsidence, faults, earthquakes and human activities. Synthetic biology has proposed a novel way to repair and remediate problems. One of the possible solution is biomineralization of calcium carbonate using microbes such as Bacillus species. The application of microbial concrete in construction may simplify some of the existing construction processes and revolutionize them.
Instead of calcite precipitation from natural microbial, many other organisms also have the power to produce calcium carbonate, such as corals. In stony coral, Stylophora pistillata, 4 acid-rich proteins (CARPs 1–4; GenBank accession numbers KC148537–KC148539 and KC493647) were identified to be responsible for calcium carbonate precipitation (Tail Mass et al. 2013).

The putative mechanism of calcium carbonate nucleation is that the highly acidic pocket of CARPs localize the substrate, buffer and catalyze the reaction between calcium ion and carboxylate (the figure below). In a high-resolution magnetic resonance spectroscopy analyses, evidences have been shown that the calcification in stony coral is mainly biologically controlled and relatively robust, due to the template-induced nucleation mediated by the skeleton organic matrix, in particular, acid-rich proteins like CARPs (Stanislas Von Euw et al. 2017) .

As such, bioreaction of aragonite formation is far from the thermodynamic equilibrium. It may even compromise with acidification and very low mineral saturation state (E. Tambutté & A. A. Venn et al. 2015). All CARP 1-4 can be cloned and expressed in E.coli BL21 strain and remain the activity. Each of them is able to independently catalyze the calcification in artificial seawater. This method we decided to use and improve in our project/ due to the our project.

Silicate (Si_mO_n) is one of the known form of biomineralization, the main component of planet’s crust, and many synthetic materials . The physical properties depend entirely on how the silica crystals are organized, quartz, glass or others. Its formation processes in sponge and diatom are fairly well known. The pathways require multiple proteins, but the key factors have been successfully expressed in E.coli. This silicatein gene come from the sponge Suberites domuncula. Silicatein has been documented in different works in vivo.

Centre for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI)
Faculty of Medicine Cochin Port-Royal, South wing, 2nd floor
Paris Descartes University
24, rue du Faubourg Saint Jacques
75014 Paris, France

bettencourt.igem2017@gmail.com

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 			<div class=text2> In recent years, the interest in obtaining microbial cement has gained its popularity along with such problems as fractures and fissures in concrete structures which is created by weathering, land subsidence, faults, earthquakes and human activities. Synthetic biology has proposed a novel way to repair and remediate problems. One of the possible solution is biomineralization of calcium carbonate using microbes such as Bacillus species. The application of microbial concrete in construction may simplify some of the existing construction processes and revolutionize them.</br>
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 			Instead of calcite precipitation from natural microbial, many other organisms also have the power to produce calcium carbonate, such as corals. In stony coral, Stylophora pistillata, 4 acid-rich proteins (CARPs 1–4; GenBank accession numbers KC148537–KC148539 and KC493647) were identified to be responsible for calcium carbonate precipitation (Tail Mass et al. 2013).</div>