Team:Exeter
About 4000 years ago...
...mining started in the South West of England, with a particular focus on Devon and Cornwall and only stopped as recently as 1998. The natural resources extracted brough great riches to the region but have left a legacy of devastating environmental consequences.
Today, the consequences...
...are more evident than ever. A litany of heavy metal ions are still found to be leaching from the mine sites into passing streams. Not only does this affect the surrounding flora and fauna, but there is potential for the pollution, if unchecked, to find its way into human consumption.
This summer...
...we took inspiration from the role of pili in bacterial pathogenicity. These hair-like structures have evolved the capability to bind to mannose molecules on cell surface membranes. While these pili were improving in E.coli, metallothioneins, capable of binding to numerous heavy metals, were developing in cyanobacteria and also in mammals. Our role was to bring these elements together.
Placed in a tripartite filter system...
...our GMO help the environment without doing any harm. A hydrocyclone is a cheap and economical solution for separating larger particles from the inflow. A fluidised media reactor houses our bacteria and is sandwiched by bactericidal UV boxes.
Meet Pili+ ...
and see how E. coli, housed inside a small, closed and cheap filter unit, can bind heavy metal ion pollutants with foreign metalliothioneins fused to the terminal protein of proteinaceous hairs on the cell surface.
Find out about our filter system
As part of our project we developed a prototype of a filter system that could potentially be employed by the water industry.
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Meet the people behind the project
We are a team of ten undergraduate students from the University of Exeter.
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