Team:HUST-China
「Abstract」
WHAT WE ARE WORKING ON ?
This year HUST-China focus on the enrichment of rare earth elements. By designing and building the genetic circuits we can recycle the rare earth ions and clean the water. Our final goal is to build a highly intelligent & efficient engineering circuit including specific peptides.
WHY WE FOCUS ON THIS ?
The rare-earth elements (REEs) has aroused more public attention due to the roles they play in different fields—they serve as permanent magnets, catalysts, rechargeable batteries and other high tech product[1]. However, mining, refining, and recycling of rare earth elements do serious harm to the environment if are not properly managed. For instance, toxic acids are produced during the refining process and they are particular to be transfered into the general water supply[2]. So we want to figure out a way through which we can not only enrich rare earth elements, but also try our best to be environmentally friendly. That’s why we turn to synthetic biology.
HOW WE ACHIEVE OUR GOAL ?
Our system has been divided into sensing part and recycle part. We use lanthanide binding peptide and surface display system to recycle rare earth ions. The sensing part is based on the PmrA-B-C system which is discovered from salmonella. We also take 2015 HUST-China project as reference to help us recollect our bacterial. Further explanation will be shown in the description part.
