Team:Manchester/Description1
Project Description
Introduction
Phosphate supplementation is essential for maximizing plant yields in many agricultural settings. However, phosphate runoff from fields often causes eutrophication, leading to the deterioration of aquatic ecosystems. Moreover phosphate rock is a finite and increasingly scarce resource. Together, these two issues suggest a closed-loop solution. We aim to address this issue using a system which could sequester and store high levels of phosphate: Phosphostore. Phosphostore uses genetically-modified bacteria that can accumulate phosphate from wastewater in protein-based microcompartments for future recycling. In our project, we expressed Eut (Ethanolamine utilisation) bacterial microcompartments and a polyphosphate kinase (PPK) enzyme with a Pdu (1,2-propanediol utilisation) localization tag. This enables the encapsulation of the PPK enzyme within the microcompartment, allowing the formation of polyphosphate chains to be built and stored safely from degradation by endogenous exopolyphosphatase (PPX). We were able to proof the concept of our project through fluorescent microscopy, which can be seen here.
Real World
