Team:KAIST Korea/Plus Human
From 2012.igem.org
2012 KAIST Korea
Mail : kaist.igem.2012@gmail.com
Twitter : twitter.com/KAIST_iGEM_2012
Facebook : www.facebook.com/KAISTiGEM2012
Plus : Human Practices
Human Practices
We all know that the world economy largely rely on petroleum and it is now in a huge crisis due to its depletion. Many ideas and technologies have been suggested to replace the petroleum based system but they all have limitations. However, we, KAIST iGEM 2012 Team suggest a totally new but effective idea to substitute the conventional system. We try to produce an E. coli which can survive on CO2 and H2 as well as produce biomass, especially acetyl CoA. In this system, the substitute of petroleum system can resolve both problems of energy and material. In addition, it may relieve the global warming by consuming greenhouse gas. We are working on a project which may have great effects to our future. We believe it to be helpful and useful for human civilization but we still have to consider both the bright and dark sides of it. To do so, we have or have planned to introduce the concept of our project and synthetic biology and then share ideas about them with the public. Since synthetic biology is not very familiar to the public in Korea, we prepared some lectures for this. As people of different ages would have different thoughts and thus give various opinions about synthetic biology, we divided the public into three groups; kids (middle school students), juveniles (high school students), and adults. We made contact to most prosperous and leading people of each group and have talked about synthetic biology and the project of KAIST iGEM 2012.The First.
The primary economy of the earth is photosynthesis. We human species make up only 0.5% of the whole biomass in the earth. However human civilization is based on petroleum which depletes every second. This is not sustainable. – Jeremy Rifkin- Talk with middle school students
- Talk with high school students
- Talk with adults