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Revision as of 04:39, 1 November 2017

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Environmental Project - Home


Environmental Project



With our finished arsenic biosensor, soldiers and civilians will be able to cheaply and effectively assess arsenic contamination to protect themselves and the environment.





Contamination of the environment with toxic substances and chemicals is a grave problem faced by countries around the world. As shown by the World Savvy Monitor Organization, over 3 million people die each year due to water contamination, nearly all in developing countries. In these economically expanding developing nations, disease resulting from contaminated water comprise 80% of the total disease burden. The United Nations estimates that simply meeting the MillenniumMillennium Development Goals (MDGs) related to water and sanitation would save $7.3 billion per year in health care costs. Arsenic contamination is one such threat that plagues the water and soil of countries, clearly illustrated by the current crisis in Bangladesh. In fact, more than 60% of the Bangladeshi population is at risk of drinking water contaminated with arsenic (Smith, Lingas, and Rahman, 2000).​



Additionally, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that agricultural produce comes in contact with water during various stages of the production process, and people who consume produce that was exposed to arsenic-contaminated water are at risk of a variety of health conditions including skin, lung, kidney, liver, and bladder cancer, as well as skin lesions. Contaminated irrigation sources and soil causes arsenic to be actively taken up by aquaporins (so-called water channels) in the roots of plants in the agriculture industry (Meharg and Jardine, 2003). This polluted groundwater has been connected with the death of 1 in every 10 people involved with direct or indirect consumption.



As stated above, such an environmental risk places a heavy burden upon the workforce. An arsenic detection test that is inexpensive, easily available, and simple to use would benefit the people of these beleaguered countries, as well as those in developed ones. Allowing people to identify sources of unsafe drinking water or contaminated foods would be beneficial in heading off a future health crisis. By overcoming disease associated with arsenic contamination via biosensors, “billions more [dollars] would result from increased productivity in terms of healthy adult working days” as stated by Maude Barlow, author of Blue Covenant. ​​



Now the Cadets2Vets team poses the question: what would be the significance of an inexpensive arsenic sensor to the people of developing countries? First of all, citizens would be able to gather a small sample of soil or water, place it on one of our arsenic-sensing tickets, wait a minimum of 20 minutes for incubation (Pardee, 2012), and finally use a small camera to capture an image of the ticket to provide a report on the amount of arsenic in their environmental sample. The Cadets2Vets team also has long-term goals to produce our own lysate that will be used to load into the tickets. Based on our economic model, this process would decrease the price of an arsenic-sensing ticket to about 50¢ per unit from current, much more expensive assays that can cost more than $150 and require users to ship samples to labs and wait for results (University of Georgia, 2016). While the camera prototype would cost nearly $50, this product could be easily shared within a community, and the price of the imager will decrease with better components and production methods. In addition to this, our ticket does not produce mercuric waste or arsine gas as some common detection assays do (Melamed D, 2004).



The economic and health effects of our bacteria-based arsenic sensor are revolutionary. As supported by the statistics above, governments would save billions of dollars in health costs and have a more productive, healthy workforce. To conclude, the London School of Economics shows that there is a direct correlation between environmental quality and happiness (MacKerron, 2011). From a utilitarian, economic, and environmental standpoint, the Cadets2Vets biosensor embodies tremendous potential for international progress. ​​



Bibliography



  1. Bereza-Malcolm LT, Mann G, Franks AE (2015) Environmental Sensing of Heavy Metals Through Whole Cell Microbial Biosensors: A Synthetic Biology Approach. ACS Synth Biol 4: 535–546.
  2. Carlin A, Shi W, Dey S, Rosen BP, Carlin A, Shi W, Dey S, Rosen BP (1995) The ars operon of Escherichia coli confers arsenical and antimonial resistance . These include : The ars Operon of Escherichia coli Confers Arsenical and Antimonial Resistance. J Bacteriol 177: 981–986.
  3. French CE, de Mora K, Joshi N, et al. (2011) Synthetic Biology and the Art of the Biosensor Design. Institute of Medicine (US) Forum on Microbial Threats. The Science and Applications of Synthetic and Systems Biology: Workshop Summary. National Academies Press (US); 2011. A5. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK84465/
  4. Martinez AW, Phillips ST, Whitesides GM (2008) Three-dimensional microfluidic devices fabricated in layered paper and tape. Proc Natl Acad Sci 105: 19606–19611. Available from: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0810903105
  5. Nunnally D Three decades after the Asarco smelter shutdown, its toxic legacy surprises Tacoma newcomers | The News Tribune. News Trib Available from: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article43503663.html
  6. Pardee K, Green AA, Ferrante T, Cameron DE, Daleykeyser A, Yin P, Collins JJ (2014) Paper-based synthetic gene networks. Cell 159: 940–954. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.10.004
  7. Rowe S (2014) State begins cleanup of Tacoma’s Vassault Park | The News Tribune. News Trib Available from: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article25871182.html
  8. Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department: Dirt Alert. Available from: http://www.tpchd.org/environment/healthy-environment/dirt-alert/​
  9. Schneider, C. A.; Rasband, W. S. & Eliceiri, K. W. (2012), "NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis", Nature methods 9(7): 671-675, PMID 22930834

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