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<h3><a href="https://www.anl.gov/">Argonne National Laboratory</a></h3> | <h3><a href="https://www.anl.gov/">Argonne National Laboratory</a></h3> | ||
<h6>Our team contacted and discussed with Edward Barry, from Argonne National Laboratory. He helped us further understand how our project can be applied into the real world and how we can potentially spread our project idea. His advice on how industry level research must meet high standards to pass into implementation was insightful and eye-opening and his suggestions on how to contact other companies and laboratories to spread word of our project was crucial to helping us reach out beyond our comfort zone. Argonne itself is one of the nation's top research centers with a history dating back to the Manhattan Project in 1940, but their Oleo Sponge which was built to respond to oil spills caught our attention which spurred us to meet up and talk to them about their experiences. We aimed to contact the laboratory in order to see the greater application of our own project. Their perspective on how ideas are developed and then transformed into working products were valuable and helped us conceptualize the process of making our ideas into reality. From this discussion we were able to change our applied design section. Their suggestion was for us to have a sponge with our degrading bacteria implemented within. However, with this new idea, our design transformed into the idea of having the water w/oil being pumped into a separate factory. Sponges would then be placed into the water and oil mixture where the former will soak up oil and the degradation process would take place inside the sponge. This method is a large improvement from before because now the oil would be controlled in one area as opposed to being ambiguously spread out.</h6> | <h6>Our team contacted and discussed with Edward Barry, from Argonne National Laboratory. He helped us further understand how our project can be applied into the real world and how we can potentially spread our project idea. His advice on how industry level research must meet high standards to pass into implementation was insightful and eye-opening and his suggestions on how to contact other companies and laboratories to spread word of our project was crucial to helping us reach out beyond our comfort zone. Argonne itself is one of the nation's top research centers with a history dating back to the Manhattan Project in 1940, but their Oleo Sponge which was built to respond to oil spills caught our attention which spurred us to meet up and talk to them about their experiences. We aimed to contact the laboratory in order to see the greater application of our own project. Their perspective on how ideas are developed and then transformed into working products were valuable and helped us conceptualize the process of making our ideas into reality. From this discussion we were able to change our applied design section. Their suggestion was for us to have a sponge with our degrading bacteria implemented within. However, with this new idea, our design transformed into the idea of having the water w/oil being pumped into a separate factory. Sponges would then be placed into the water and oil mixture where the former will soak up oil and the degradation process would take place inside the sponge. This method is a large improvement from before because now the oil would be controlled in one area as opposed to being ambiguously spread out.</h6> | ||
− | <center><img src="https:// | + | <center><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/e/e7/CCA_San_Diego_ArgonneImg.png" width="60%" height="auto"</center> |
− | <center><img src="https:// | + | <center><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/3/31/CCA_San_Diego_ArgonnePhoto.jpg" width="60%" height="auto"></center> |
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<h3>British Petroleum BioSciences Center</h3> | <h3>British Petroleum BioSciences Center</h3> | ||
<h6>Our CCA iGEM team met and presented in front of scientists from the BP BioSciences Center. The scientists were kind enough to offer feedback and give us some guidance on our project. This meeting provided for us a way to spread awareness of our project to professional biology companies in San Diego and obtain feedback from veterans of the field. We met up with them at their headquarters in San Diego, where we had the chance to pick at the brains of their scientists and representatives. We got to hear their side of the story on the issue of BP’s infamous Deepwater Horizon oil spill, including some of the innovations they came up with to deal with millions of gallons of oil flooding into the ocean. Our work on creating a genetically modified organism that could fill that niche was noted by the scientists, and they took great interest on how heavy duty mechanical cleanup could be joined with the microbial approach. They mentored us on how to properly test our product, suggesting we look into dispersants as a way of dissolving and isolating the oil from the water. We learned a lot about how the oil industry has dedicated significant amounts of research and development into oil spill response, and we’re glad to be involved in that front.</h6> | <h6>Our CCA iGEM team met and presented in front of scientists from the BP BioSciences Center. The scientists were kind enough to offer feedback and give us some guidance on our project. This meeting provided for us a way to spread awareness of our project to professional biology companies in San Diego and obtain feedback from veterans of the field. We met up with them at their headquarters in San Diego, where we had the chance to pick at the brains of their scientists and representatives. We got to hear their side of the story on the issue of BP’s infamous Deepwater Horizon oil spill, including some of the innovations they came up with to deal with millions of gallons of oil flooding into the ocean. Our work on creating a genetically modified organism that could fill that niche was noted by the scientists, and they took great interest on how heavy duty mechanical cleanup could be joined with the microbial approach. They mentored us on how to properly test our product, suggesting we look into dispersants as a way of dissolving and isolating the oil from the water. We learned a lot about how the oil industry has dedicated significant amounts of research and development into oil spill response, and we’re glad to be involved in that front.</h6> | ||
− | <img src="https:// | + | <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/f/fc/CCA_San_Diego_Companies_BP.jpg" width="60%" height="auto" |
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<h3>Beach Cleanup</h3> | <h3>Beach Cleanup</h3> | ||
<h6>Having seen the effects of chemical pollutants on our beloved beaches firsthand during the beach cleanup, our team sought to tailor our project so that it would minimally affect the environment, including natural resources and animals, around us. Before this event, we mainly focused on the degradation of simple compounds, such as fluorene, phenanthrene, and naphthalene. After this event, upon discovering the deleterious effect of oil in the marine ecosystem, we decided to shift our focus to degrading crude oils and thus, to develop a bacteria that could degrade harmful substances of a greater scale. Philippe, our head of Lab, bought crude oil to test how our engineered bacteria would degrade this substance. For the results, click <a href="https://2017.igem.org/Team:CCA_San_Diego/Applied_Design">here.</a></h6> | <h6>Having seen the effects of chemical pollutants on our beloved beaches firsthand during the beach cleanup, our team sought to tailor our project so that it would minimally affect the environment, including natural resources and animals, around us. Before this event, we mainly focused on the degradation of simple compounds, such as fluorene, phenanthrene, and naphthalene. After this event, upon discovering the deleterious effect of oil in the marine ecosystem, we decided to shift our focus to degrading crude oils and thus, to develop a bacteria that could degrade harmful substances of a greater scale. Philippe, our head of Lab, bought crude oil to test how our engineered bacteria would degrade this substance. For the results, click <a href="https://2017.igem.org/Team:CCA_San_Diego/Applied_Design">here.</a></h6> | ||
− | <img src="https:// | + | <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/1/13/CCA_San_Diego_BeachCleanPhoto.png" |
width="60%" height="auto"><br> | width="60%" height="auto"><br> | ||
Latest revision as of 03:52, 19 November 2017