NTHU Taiwan

Project Introduction

This year, our goal is to deal with EDCs (Endocrine Disruptor Chemicals), which can interfere with endocrine systems, causing cancerous tumors, birth defects, and other developmental disorders. These chemicals are mostly man-made and found in various materials such as pesticides, food containers and personal care products. In this project, we primarily focus on two common kinds of EDCs, BPA (Bisphenol A) and NP (Nonyl Phenol), in industrial waste water.

There are mainly two objectives in our project, detection of EDCs and degradation of EDCs.

For detection, we first modified E.coli to express EDC receptor, ER (estrogen receptor alpha), on the membrane of E.coli. Next, we modified E.coli to produce monobodies and assembled them on a gold electrode surface. Once EDCs are binded with ER, monobodies will capture bounded ER, making E.coli closer to gold electrode. This leads to impedance changes on gold electrode. Via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), we can measure this change and further estimate the concentration of EDCs.

For degradation, we modified E.coli to produce target enzymes which are able to degrade BPA and NP. To make our project more applicable, we integrated target enzymes with activated carbon, membrane and bioreactor system to eliminate these contaminants in waste water. We also employed feedback control loop, together with detection of EDCs, so as to enhance the efficiency of degradation.

In the future, we hope to put our idea into practice in order to make our world a better place.