Team:HUST-China
「Abstract」
WHAT WE ARE WORKING ON ?
This year HUST-China focuses on the enrichment of rare earth elements. By designing and constructing the genetic circuits,we can recycle the rare earth ions and purify sewage. Our ultimate goal is to build a highly intelligent & efficient engineering circuit including specific peptides.
WHY WE FOCUS ON THIS ?
The rare-earth elements (REEs) have aroused more and more public attention,due to the roles they play in different fields--permanent magnets, catalysts, rechargeable batteries and other high tech products[1]. However,if improperly managed,everything about these elements ,such as mining, refining,will do great harm to the environment. For instance, toxic acids are produced during the refining process,and particularly, they may leach into our water supply[2]. So we want to figure out a way, which is not only to enrich rare earth elements, but also environmentally friendly. And we think is time to turn to synthetic biology to construct this intelligent system.
HOW WE ACHIEVE OUR GOAL ?
Our system has been divided into sensing part and capture part. We use lanthanide binding tags and surface display system to recycle rare earth ions. The sensing part is based on the pmrA-B-C system,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.
