Team:HokkaidoU Japan/Description
Description
Eutrophication is a phenomenon that undermines our lives quietly but steadily by polluting water or damaging fisheries. Our team aim to solve the problem through stock-breeding by utilizing self-assembling peptides (SAPs), the materials now getting more and more attention in many fields. Using SAPs, we try to reduce the excess leakage of nutrition from the farm.
This year, we work on following projects: phytase strengthening, fertilizer production and phosphate retrieve. Phytase is an enzyme that stocks take in with food and it helps them absorb nutrition by degrading phytic acid which contains 6 phosphate and chelate minerals. We try to circularize the enzyme using SAPs to increase the enzyme stability against heat or extreme pH. It may lead enhancing absorption of nutrition and decrease the amount of phosphate in the excretion. Production of fertilizer from the excrement is now widely performed under the status quo, however, since the feces often contains urine, it holds too much water to advance fermentation and it requires time and labor to make proper fertilizer. We try to let the bacteria in the intestine of animals produce gels made of SAPs that holds appropriate amount of water and realize the fertilizer production without trouble. While 2nd project is mainly focusing on feces, we also planning to use urine to retrieve phosphate. By producing gels of SAPs that chelate phosphate, we expect to reduce the leakage of phosphate and enable to reuse them.
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