Team:HokkaidoU Japan/Description
Description
Eutrophication is a phenomenon that undermines our lives quietly but steadily by polluting water or damaging fisheries. Our team aims to solve the problem through stock-breeding by utilizing self-assembling peptides (SAPs), the material now getting more and more attention in many fields. Using SAPs, we will attempt to reduce the excess leakage of nutrition from the farm.
This year, we will work on following projects: phytase strengthening, fertilizer production and phosphate retrieval. Phytase is an enzyme that stocks take in with food which helps them absorb nutrition by degrading phytic acid, a substance that contains 6 phosphates and chelates minerals. We will try to circularize the enzyme using SAPs to increase the enzyme stability against heat or extreme pH. This could lead to enhancing nutrition absorption and decreasing 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 contain urine, it holds too much water to proceed fermentation and it requires time and labor to make a proper fertilizer. We will try to make the bacteria in the intestine of animals produce gels made of SAPs that holds appropriate amount of water,and carry out fertilizer production without trouble. While the 2nd project is mainly focused on feces, we are 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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