Difference between revisions of "Team:USTC/Description"
| Line 282: | Line 282: | ||
<p id="first" class="scrollspy label label-pink">Background</p> | <p id="first" class="scrollspy label label-pink">Background</p> | ||
<br> | <br> | ||
| − | + | <p>Problems need to be solved</p> | |
| + | <p>As science and technology develop so fast, manufacturing has became a mature business. Lots of different things can be synthesized by us human being! Even something we can’t even imagine 100 years ago. <p/> | ||
| + | <p>However, nothing is too good. We want things become better and better, of course. And there are many troubles in the manufacturing! For example, there will be a lot of pollutions if we synthesize something with a chemical method. In addition, chemical methods are lack of specificity, which means it will take a lot of troublesome work to purify the compound we want. </p> | ||
| + | <p>How to solve? </p> | ||
| + | <p> So people now begin to turn their attention to a new and hot research field——Microbial ElectroSynthesis(MES). MES entails the application of microorganism to the cathode of an electrochemical cell, in which those microbes can catalyze the process of fermentation or production of fuels and chemicals.</p> | ||
| + | <p> So, MES can synthesize things, especially some biological products, in a more environmental-friendly way. This is what we gravely want as fossil fuel is so polluting and is already running out. With MES, we can use a much cleaner energy——electricity to synthesis carbohydrate even just from carbon dioxide. Besides, with a higher specificity, MES can save companies a great amount of money. Last but not least, thanks to its property of self-replication, the reaction system can sustain a much longer time.</p> | ||
| + | <p> But as you can imagine, there are too many problems that limit bio-synthesis’s application field. Accordingly, there are three main challenges in bio-synthesis! The first one is that the contamination risks is too high for bio-synthesis. Although things have been better during the days, companies still don’t want to take this none-or-all risk. Secondly, it’s too hard to reach a high productivity, not to mention to maintain the productivity at a high level stably. Last but not least, there are too many varieties during the process of bio-synthesis, which can NOT be managed so easily. In a word, the benefit seems too pale compared with the risks, or the loss it may cause. So bio-synthesis still can not be scaled up and put into practice in normal cases. </p> | ||
| + | <p> To conquer this great challenge, making bio-synthesis a more practical technology that can be used by most pharmaceutical companies or manufacturing factories, we came up with our project——PELICAN!! The Photo-Electro-e.coLI-CAN provides you a brand new experience of bio-synthesis, one that is way more convenient and efficient!!</p> | ||
| + | <p> As we want to build a more universal platform, we conduct our project in a more common-used host——E.coli. But most research about MES just focus on some microbes like Shewallena as they have the ability to transfer extracellular electrons into the cytoplasm originally. So what we are doing is kind of cutting-edge! </p> | ||
| + | <p> Regardless of all this obstacles, we make it! In the demonstrate section in our wiki, you can see that the three system in our project can function as we expected, which strongly prove our concept!!</p> | ||
| + | <p> Reference:</p> | ||
| + | <p> 1. Rabaey, K., & Rozendal, R. A. (2010). Microbial electrosynthesis—revisiting the electrical route for microbial production. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 8(10), 706-716.</p> | ||
| + | <p> 2. Shin, H. J., Jung, K. A., Nam, C. W., & Park, J. M. (2017). A Genetic Approach for Microbial Electrosynthesis System as Biocommodities Production Platform. Bioresource Technology.</p> | ||
| + | <p> 3. Kitching, M., Butler, R., & Marsili, E. (2017). Microbial bioelectrosynthesis of hydrogen: Current challenges and scale-up. Enzyme and microbial technology, 96, 1-13.</p> | ||
| + | <p> 4. Sakimoto, K. K., Wong, A. B., & Yang, P. (2016). Self-photosensitization of nonphotosynthetic bacteria for solar-to-chemical production. Science, 351(6268), 74-77.</p> | ||
</div> | </div> | ||
Revision as of 03:36, 25 October 2017
Background
Problems need to be solved
As science and technology develop so fast, manufacturing has became a mature business. Lots of different things can be synthesized by us human being! Even something we can’t even imagine 100 years ago.
However, nothing is too good. We want things become better and better, of course. And there are many troubles in the manufacturing! For example, there will be a lot of pollutions if we synthesize something with a chemical method. In addition, chemical methods are lack of specificity, which means it will take a lot of troublesome work to purify the compound we want.
How to solve?
So people now begin to turn their attention to a new and hot research field——Microbial ElectroSynthesis(MES). MES entails the application of microorganism to the cathode of an electrochemical cell, in which those microbes can catalyze the process of fermentation or production of fuels and chemicals.
So, MES can synthesize things, especially some biological products, in a more environmental-friendly way. This is what we gravely want as fossil fuel is so polluting and is already running out. With MES, we can use a much cleaner energy——electricity to synthesis carbohydrate even just from carbon dioxide. Besides, with a higher specificity, MES can save companies a great amount of money. Last but not least, thanks to its property of self-replication, the reaction system can sustain a much longer time.
But as you can imagine, there are too many problems that limit bio-synthesis’s application field. Accordingly, there are three main challenges in bio-synthesis! The first one is that the contamination risks is too high for bio-synthesis. Although things have been better during the days, companies still don’t want to take this none-or-all risk. Secondly, it’s too hard to reach a high productivity, not to mention to maintain the productivity at a high level stably. Last but not least, there are too many varieties during the process of bio-synthesis, which can NOT be managed so easily. In a word, the benefit seems too pale compared with the risks, or the loss it may cause. So bio-synthesis still can not be scaled up and put into practice in normal cases.
To conquer this great challenge, making bio-synthesis a more practical technology that can be used by most pharmaceutical companies or manufacturing factories, we came up with our project——PELICAN!! The Photo-Electro-e.coLI-CAN provides you a brand new experience of bio-synthesis, one that is way more convenient and efficient!!
As we want to build a more universal platform, we conduct our project in a more common-used host——E.coli. But most research about MES just focus on some microbes like Shewallena as they have the ability to transfer extracellular electrons into the cytoplasm originally. So what we are doing is kind of cutting-edge!
Regardless of all this obstacles, we make it! In the demonstrate section in our wiki, you can see that the three system in our project can function as we expected, which strongly prove our concept!!
Reference:
1. Rabaey, K., & Rozendal, R. A. (2010). Microbial electrosynthesis—revisiting the electrical route for microbial production. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 8(10), 706-716.
2. Shin, H. J., Jung, K. A., Nam, C. W., & Park, J. M. (2017). A Genetic Approach for Microbial Electrosynthesis System as Biocommodities Production Platform. Bioresource Technology.
3. Kitching, M., Butler, R., & Marsili, E. (2017). Microbial bioelectrosynthesis of hydrogen: Current challenges and scale-up. Enzyme and microbial technology, 96, 1-13.
4. Sakimoto, K. K., Wong, A. B., & Yang, P. (2016). Self-photosensitization of nonphotosynthetic bacteria for solar-to-chemical production. Science, 351(6268), 74-77.
Design Summary
