Team:Stanford-Brown/Description

At NASA, we recognize that our best hopes for space exploration rely on reducing up mass. We know currently that bringing a rubber tree into space is impossible if incredibly impractical, and that batteries have their own unique issues in terms of payload expense and chemical hazards. Rubbers have incredible applications as shock absorbers, insulators, or even as lubricants. Additional application might certainly become apparent in the event that the rubber, or even the battery, be created from self-healing materials.

Our first project is a bioBactery: inspired by the natural structure of electric eels (which is thought to have motivated the invention of batteries). We decided to investigate the limits of biology by attempting to generate a potential difference across a densely packed colony of highly-organized E. coli within a microfluidic device, via optogenetically-induced ionic transport. This project would seek to circumvent issues surrounding high payload costs, or explosive hazards from chemical batteries.

For our second project, we turn to self-healing materials; the attractive feature of such materials is, as given away by the name, their ability to repair and mend their own wounds, by the action of incorporated healing agents. Yet, in synthetic self-healing materials, only a limited amount of healing agent is available. Through integrating a biological component, such as an optogenetically activated, glue-secreting bacteria, we aim to control the metabolism of these bacteria to promote self-healing repeatedly. Such a novel technology could also seek to reduce waste, given potential incorporation in manufacturing processes, while certainly providing expansive applications both in terms of acting as a device material for a battery, or for space exploration.

Finally, our third project centers around the concept of a latex ecosystem, building off the latex construct developed by our team in 2016, and previous rubber degradation processes developed by other teams. Imagine scientists on the ISS being able to simply discard latex gloves into an E. coli culture, only to have a separate culture using the products of the first in the production of a new glove. Not only would this help decrease costs for expensive payloads, but such a concept could aid to further global efforts against scientific and medical waste. As a central component to this project aims to generate a way to control latex polymerization, there are many conceivable applications in industry for the generation of latex as well.