Team:Worldshaper-Nanjing

Self-sinking Algae for CO2 Sequestration

Increasing level of carbon dioxide in earth's atmosphere is the main reason of global warming. Thus, it has become important to slow down the accumulation rate or reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in atmosphere. Here, we hope to develop an efficient biological carbon dioxide sequestration system using Synchronous sp. PCC 7002. The capability of CO2 capturing and storage of the algae was improved by inserting foreign genes, encoding rubisco, and starch synthase. The modified strain was also designed to have an expression of a metal binding protein on its pilus to increase weight and deactivate pilus slowly, which would finally cause the alga to sink to the sea bottom permanently so as to cut off the carbon from being reused.