About us

Canada’s forests represent not only an established source of economic revenue, but also a potential source for biofuel substrate. Waste cellulose by-products from pulp and paper processing are removed using chemicals, heat, and water. Microbial cellulose-degrading enzymes are high-value targets for industrial applications. Focused on innovative applications of synthetic biology, the undergraduate Dalhousie iGEM team has undertaken a multi-year project to harness the degradative capacity of microorganisms to convert cellulose into ethanol for biofuel applications. Advances in DNA sequencing technology and bioinformatics have revolutionized our ability to identify useful genes in complex biological samples. We hypothesize that the porcupine microbiome, which includes microorganisms capable of digesting bark and tree resin, will be a rich source of these useful genes. If our hypothesis is correct, mining the porcupine microbiome has the advantage of finding a suite of enzymes that have evolved to work in concert to efficiently degrade cellulose. Working with the Shubenacadie Wildlife Park, we identified cellulose-degrading bacteria in the porcupine microbiome using 16S rRNA sequencing and analysis of DNA extracted from fecal samples. Further analysis using PICRUSt – a bioinformatics platform that estimates functional gene profile(s) in sequenced sample(s) – identified two genes from the bacterium Ruminiclostridium thermocellum involved in cellulose degradation: endoglucanase and β-glucosidase; Endoglucanase (BioBrick Reference BBa_K2160000) was cloned at Dalhousie and expressed in Escherichia coli. PICRUSt was also used to compare candidate cellulose-degrading enzymes from herbivores, omnivores and carnivores. PICRUSt data was supported by metagenomic sequencing of fecal samples and functional analysis. The microbiomes of 20 additional mammals at the Park were characterized, and the compiled data was used to create an interactive Shubenacadie Park Microbiome Map to facilitate public education.