As fossil fuels continue to run out across the globe, many people are looking to alternate sources of energy that are renewable and eco-friendlier. One of these options is biofuel which is fuel made from organic matter. Most commonly made from ethanol, biofuel or bioethanol can be used as a fuel for vehicles in its’ pure form. In the field of biofuel production, bioethanol made from cellulose continues to be the dominant form. However harsh methods are required to be able to extract the sugars from cellulose and convert it to ethanol.
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Atlantic Canada’s main export is wood, pulp, and paper. Many of us on the team grew up next to pulp and paper mills and saw the hazardous waste expelled by the processes in these buildings. Extraction of usable materials from wood is fairly inefficient, leaving behind wood waste that could be used for biofuel production if broken down and converted to ethanol. The only question is: how?</br>
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WHAT</br>
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The Dalhousie iGEM team this year is focused on using the microbiome of the porcupine to solve this conversion of wood waste to ethanol. A huge part of the porcupine’s diet is made from bark. Unable to digest the cellulose, hemi-cellulose, and lignin in the bark, the gut bacteria of the porcupine do the work instead. We hypothesized that the microbiome of the porcupine would contain enzymes that convert cellulose, hemi-cellulose, and lignin to glucose; a usable sugar. We then hypothesized that if the genes coding for these enzymes were expressed in a vector in E. coli, the E. coli would then be able to digest cellulose and create glucose. Finally, we hypothesized that a bioreactor system containing both E. coli and yeast would be able to create ethanol from wood waste as the yeast would ferment the glucose created by the E. coli.</br>
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HOW WE DID IT</br>
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To be assessed later</br>
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Revision as of 13:14, 4 October 2017
Experiments
Experiemnts
None, as of yet!
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